


Don't Look Back in Anger

by Page161of180



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sleeping with the enemy, always glad to provide more specific details than that if desired, and also being very sad because you think the enemy doesn't love you back the way you love him, and then carrying ten years of guilt about hurting the enemy, and then falling in love with the enemy, michael POV, pre-canon and S1 AU, secrets and lies, the classic tale, warnings for canon traumatic events/issues, with a little end-of-S2 fix-it tucked in before the end, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:39:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25224028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Page161of180/pseuds/Page161of180
Summary: “My dad said that an alien seduced Tripp into trusting her, so that she could exact revenge. He once said that you were doing the same thing to me. But he was wrong. I know that you loved me.” Alex Manes, Episode 2x09In a universe where Michael Sanders grows up on his dad’s warnings about what happened when Harlan and Tripp Manes stormed the Long Farm in 1948, it’s a no-brainer for Michael to keep his friends close and the son of his greatest enemy closer. Trouble is, Michael can never seem to keep Alex Manes close enough . . .In any universe.A (sort of) AU in which Jesse and Alex arebothright about Michael’s intentions toward the youngest Manes Man.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 135
Kudos: 268





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> *Taps microphone* Hello, friends. This is my first time posting in this fandom; thank you for letting me crash the party. I admit that I didn't foresee writing about these characters, but when I was watching Season 2, a singular plot idea bit me and wouldn't let me go, and ~40,000 words later, here I am, exporting it onto you kind folks.
> 
> In terms of mechanics, this is a fully complete story that I'll be posting in chapters over the next few weeks. I feel a bit bad posting in parts, because there's quite a lot of angst/pining/misunderstanding here that doesn't get all the way resolved until the last chapter, but I want to make sure I have time to proofread/polish thoroughly. I promise that no matter how bleak things look for the characters, there's a happy ending (happy beginning, really) coming.
> 
> In terms of substance, this story is what it says on the tin: an AU in which Michael grows up knowing about his family's history with the Manes Men and decides (with no ulterior motives whatsoever, seriously none, what are you talking about, he hates all Maneses, period, no exceptions, definitely not with regard to Alex in particular) that Alex Manes' apparent high-school crush on him may have some use. But-- spoilers-- it turns out that Michael is very bad at not falling in love with Alex, regardless of the universe. And unfortunately, neither Michael nor Alex is particularly good at making what they really feel known to the other.
> 
> A couple other things: although this is an AU retelling of canon events up to and including Season 1 (with some info that we learned in Season 2 threaded in), I have chosen to massively streamline and in some respects alter the canon plotlines (because so! many! plotlines!). The biggest changes are axing the bulk of the fourth alien plot and dialing down the body count (including regarding Rosa). Also, in terms of romantic plotlines, there's no Michael-Maria subplot, because Michael and Alex are together (ish) for the duration of the story. (I've tried to build in-universe explanations for those deviations into the story, but I'm happy to give up-front spoilers in comments if requested.) The bulk of content warnings that would apply to Season 1 otherwise apply here, including but not limited to: Jesse Manes' abuse of Alex, Jesse Manes' homophobic attack in the toolshed, Jesse Manes' systematic torture of innocent people, (honestly, just Jesse Manes, period), Michael's distrust of the military and most other institutions of authority, Alex's active-duty service and injury and efforts to adjust to his disability, Caulfield, Isobel's blackouts (although, again, I've cut the part where she ends up married to a murderer who is invading her mind), car accidents, loss of parent, etc. I am more than happy to give more details about any of those subjects (or other concerns you may have) in comments. By the same token, if you feel that there are issues with how any of those or other subjects are presented here, I am always grateful for your perspective and keen to do better. 
> 
> Lastly, I'd like to say that while Michael spends large stretches of this story refusing to trust himself and Alex and their love, the story is ultimately about Michael learning to let his and Alex's past be their past-- in terms of both their families' tragic history and the things they have personally done to hurt each other. On that note, the title is inspired by the gorgeous, mid-90s Oasis song, which has a highly relevant title but is otherwise only tangentially related to the story. Because this is Roswell New Mexico, and that's how we roll.

**Prologue, 2007**

“Sanders Auto.”

If Michael’s dad hadn’t already ditched the shop for the night to go back to their trailer at the far end of the lot and pretend not to watch Deadliest Catch, he’d probably have a lot to say about the sheer amount of not-giving-a-shit that Michael manages to pack into a two-word phone greeting-- not to mention how loud the radio is playing. But Michael is a freaky alien genius to whom the limits of human ability don’t apply, and the radio is a necessity if he’s going to keep his insides from making him climb the walls. And anyway, his dad  _ isn’t  _ here, and his dad’s not exactly Mr. Sunshine with customers even if he  _ was _ here, and any asshole who calls at-- Michael checks the cracked clock on the opposite wall-- 9:55 when Michael’s allowed to close down at ten on school nights gets what they have comin.’

“ _ Hi. Yeah. I, uh. I need a tow? _ ”

When Michael registers  _ whose  _ voice is coming across the scratchy landline, he almost goes ass-first off the rolling stool behind the counter. It’s only the TK that stops him.

“ _ Hello? _ ” 

The voice--  _ his  _ voice-- goes harder, like he doesn’t know if he believes that anyone is actually listening. Michael doesn’t bother to hold back his scoff. Typical. Another human that thinks they’re the only person in the universe who knows anything. When Michael could tow their busted up cars with his  _ brain _ , and Michael’s sorta-sister can make them forget they ever had cars, and Michael’s sorta-brother can . . . blow out the fluorescents when Liz Ortecho bends over in the bio lab, mostly, but probably he’s got latent talents. 

“Yeah, I heard ya,” Michael announces unceremoniously, after he untwists himself from the phone cord. “You need a tow?”

Michael gets the car’s make and the problem and the location, not bothering to write any of it down. He never bothers to write it down-- because, hello, freaky alien genius? But he’s got more reasons than usual not to waste ink on these particular details.

“ ‘Kay. I’ll send someone over,” he lies, when he’s done.

“ _ Don’t you need my name or anything first? _ ” 

Michael manages not to crush the plastic receiver in his hand.

“I know your name,  _ Manes _ .”

Michael doesn’t just know the name; he knows what it means. His dad may only have been a kid the night that Harlan and Tripp Manes lit up the Long Farm in 1948, but he made damn sure that Michael grew up knowing who the Manes Men really are, and what they took from Michael. What they’ll go on taking if Michael doesn’t keep both eyes open-- which is something his dad hasn’t been able to do in sixty years, thanks once again to-- you guessed it-- the Maneses.

So yeah, Michael knows their names, just like he knows their voices and their straight-backed shapes in a crowd. Jesse Manes and his four military-issue fanatics-in-training. Michael knows ‘em name, rank, and serial number. Right down to  _ Michael’s  _ Manes. Or-- the Manes in Michael’s year. 

Alex. 

Alex with the voice that’s soft and measured, but goes tight and clipped and unflinching when that jackass Kyle Valenti and his pals give him a hard time. Alex who’s all eyeliner and skinny jeans instead of his big brothers’ ROTC crew cuts, as if that can change what’s coded into his DNA. Alex who spends hours hiding in the music room with his guitar, like it’s so hard being the runt of an evil empire, instead of the people that the empire hunts. 

Alex who’s stranded in the ass-crack of nowhere unless Michael gives him a tow.

There’s a quiet sigh over the line. When Alex speaks again, it’s a tone that Michael also recognizes. “ _ Do you have any idea how long it might be? _ ”

Michael ignores the tug in his chest. Instead he crosses his arms, even though Alex can’t see it.

“Guess we’ll find out,” he says, loud and fake, then slams the receiver back into its cradle before Alex can breathe out like he’s centering himself again. 

It’s ten o’clock by then, so Michael shuts off the radio, closes up the shop, and heads back to the trailer. He switches the channel to Battle Bots. His dad doesn’t fight it (not that there’s much point when Michael can push the buttons on the remote with his mind), just gets up to heat a second grilled spam-and-cheese for Michael. Michael goes through the motions of eating and watching, but he can barely keep his mind on the show-- and it ain’t because the joke that’s his AP Physics homework takes so much of his attention. 

No, he keeps thinking about the resignation in Alex Manes’ voice when he asked how long it might take for the tow truck to come. 

Alex gets like that sometimes, Michael has observed. Stoic, dignified in his suffering, instead of the hothead he usually is. He’ll be in Jackass Valenti’s face one minute, spitting mad, nostrils flaring around his septum piercing. Then suddenly it’s like someone flips a switch and he’s standing like a statue, prepared to take whatever kinda punch Valenti’s offensive line decides to throw at him. 

Usually Michael wonders if that’s all part of Jesse’s training: don’t let them see what you can really do. Throw all the fights, until you’re ready to make your real move.

Tonight though, Michael mostly keeps thinking about how there are lot of assholes like Valenti-- and worse-- in this town, who might take issue with the not-so-white-bread emo kid or whatever Alex is supposed to be, stranded on the side of the highway. And that Alex probably knows how to fight back, but more often than not, he still ends up just taking the punch anyway.

Michael is up and reaching for his keys before he stops to think about it. He tells his dad he’s headed over to the Evanses. 

“Sure you are, kid,” Sanders scoffs. “Whoever she is, just don’t get her pregnant.”

Michael ignores the way his cheeks flush for no good reason at his dad’s lame joke. He focuses on telling himself that he’s not protecting a Manes right now. All he’s protecting is his own territory. The Maneses are his to terrorize and harass and ultimately destroy, after all. His and Isobel’s and Max’s. And no small-town macho-man is going to take part of Michael’s victory from him, even if it’s just the baby of the family.

When Michael gets to the location Alex gave him, there’s an empty car but no Alex, and his stomach seizes in a way he can’t explain. So he doesn’t try to explain it, just gets out of the truck and searches for any signs of struggle, even as he tells himself that’s not what he’s doing. But when he sees the note underneath the windshield, in narrow, even handwriting, he can’t deny the relief that nearly bowls him over. 

He makes his way back to the truck and then drives a few miles down the road to the Wild Pony, where Alex’s note said he’d be. He’s greeted in the parking lot by Maria Deluca, looking unimpressed by Michael, like usual, and a lady he’s guessing is Maria’s mom, who looks even more furious. Rosa Ortecho is also with them, which sets off a whole chain of Isobel-shaped alarms that he doesn’t want to deal with right now, either, so he ignores them, too.

Alex is sitting on the curb, his knees tucked up to his chin. He’s made himself about as small as a guy like him can. But when he sees Michael, he just raises one dark eyebrow.

“You came.”

Michael feels something uncomfortably close to shame at the surprise behind Alex’s even tone. Instead of dwelling on it, he leans farther out the window to bang on the driver’s side door. 

“Yeah, and now I’m goin.’ So hop in if you want me to do something about your piece-of-crap car tonight.”

Alex exchanges hugs with Deluca and her mom and lets Rosa put him in a brief headlock even though she’s a foot shorter than him. When he settles into the passenger side of the tow truck, Michael peels out of the parking lot before Alex can even buckle his seatbelt. 

It’s only a couple minutes’ drive to Alex’s car, but by Michael’s math, it’s easily a half-hour walk. On the drive back, Michael spends the time that he’s pointedly  _ not  _ talking to Alex noticing how pitch-black the road is everywhere his headlights don’t swipe, nothing but endless desert on either side. 

When he spots Alex’s stupid old sedan and pulls over onto the shoulder, he finally looks at Alex, who’s staring straight ahead.

“Did you call Maria or somebody to take you to the Pony?”

Alex whips his head around to meet Michael’s gaze. His eyes are dark, and there’s a crinkle that forms right between them. Alex tilts his head a fraction of a degree then shakes his head, looking away from Michael.

“I didn’t want to bother anyone.”

Michael whistles. “It’s a long walk this time of night.”

“Yeah, well, I was stranded by the side of the road, so I didn’t really have a lot of options, did I?”

There’s that switch of his, this time flipping the opposite direction. Resignation to spark. There’s no reason to admire feistiness in the grandson of the man who killed your mom, so Michael hops out of the truck and pulls his flashlight and tools out from under the seat. 

“Just sayin,’” he calls over his shoulder as he makes his way toward Alex’s car. “You coulda called daddy to come pick you up.”

Michael doesn’t have to fake the bite in his taunt. He doesn’t fake the surprise when Alex-- who moves like a frickin’ cat in those stupid Doc Martens, apparently-- answers from just a few feet behind Michael’s shoulder. 

“I wouldn’t ask my father to piss on me if I was on fire.”

There’s a groundedness to Alex’s words that Michael honestly kind of envies. They don’t sound like a front, the way Isobel is always saying Michael’s ‘tough-guy act’ does. Michael  _ believes  _ him.

And strangely enough, Michael doesn’t think anyone’s ever come closer to describing his own thoughts on Jesse Manes.

Michael finds himself nodding as he lifts the hood and starts shining a light on the damage. It’s an easy fix, even without his powers-- quicker to deal with now than to tow the car all the way back to the shop. But then, they’re all easy fixes for someone like him.

He starts to tuck the flashlight under his armpit so he can open his kit, but Alex surprises him-- again-- by reaching out and holding the light for him. He even shines it in close to the right spot. 

Michael works in silence, less annoyed than he would normally be by the fact that a ten-second job is going to take twenty minutes because he has to hide all that he can do from small-minded humans. When Alex moves the light an inch to the right before Michael can ask him to, Michael grunts in acknowledgment.

There’s no further attempt at communication until Michael is finished and they stand staring awkwardly at each other from opposite sides of the now closed hood. 

“Will your dad give you a hard time for breaking curfew?” Michael chooses to ask, after the wordless moment stretches a good ten seconds too long. He tells himself he’s intel gathering, and not just grasping at straws to break the silence.

Alex only snorts, short and bleak. 

“What?”

Alex just shakes his head. He looks at Michael, the hard-luck scholarship kid whose one-eyed foster dad runs a garage that can barely stay in the black, like he doesn’t get that  _ he’s  _ the one who was born into the closest thing flag-waving Roswell has to royalty. He looks like  _ he’s  _ trying to spare  _ Michael  _ from the fact that this planet is hard and ugly and stupid.

“Sure,” Alex finally says. “He’ll give me a hard time.”

Michael’s breath catches at the note of resignation that’s back in Alex’s voice. But before he can say anything more-- or decide if he even wants to say anything more-- Alex’s back goes ramrod straight, like he’s made a decision of his own.

“Thank you,” Alex says after a careful breath in, meeting Michael’s gaze with a look that’s almost on fire with too much sincerity. “For coming to get me after all.”

And then just like that, he’s in his car and down the empty highway, driving slowly and deliberately toward the one house in this nothing town that Michael would let his powers pull apart board by board without feeling a single shred of guilt. 

Michael spends a long time standing there by the side of the empty road, trying not to think about Alex thanking him, genuinely, for only half-way going through with his plan to leave Alex to the vultures and Valentis. As if Michael had just done a  _ good _ thing in Alex’s life.

He spends a longer time the next day, and then the rest of that week until the final bell rings on Friday afternoon, trying not to think about the limp Alex does his best to hide when he walks into homeroom. And how he didn’t have it the night before. 

  
  
  
  



	2. Act One, part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The ache that turned into a knot that turned into a burning coal lodged behind Michael’s breastbone over the course of this conversation suddenly detonates. Michael pushes back in his chair, and sniffs-- his ‘angry sniff,’ Isobel calls it. Fine by him, if it gets his point across._
> 
> _“Well good for Alex,” he says with a sneer. He’s not talking loud enough that other people will be able to hear him, but he’s also not whispering. “Hope he enjoys the parade. But whatever he is, doesn’t make any difference to me. ‘Cause he’s a Manes. And the only thing a Manes Man gets to kiss is my ass.”_
> 
> _Isobel tips her head to one side and pretends to look confused. “Did you mean for that to sound as sexual as it did?”_
> 
> Senior year, part one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much, everyone, for your kind words on the prologue! I can't tell you how much I appreciate the warm welcome to a dauntingly active fandom.
> 
> The chapters will be a bit longer from here on out, now that we're into the heart of the story. This chapter and the next together make up Act One, which takes place during and just after Michael and Alex's senior year.* Apologies in advance for any heartache that may occur, especially in part two (coming this weekend)!
> 
> *As in canon, Michael and Alex fall in love and eventually 'go to the toolshed' as it were ('sup, Tripp) in this story when they're seniors in high school. There's no graphic play-by-play of what they get up to, there or elsewhere, in these two youthful chapters (although there is a *lot* of detail on Michael's feelings. So many feelings). The story's rating will increase to M in later chapters, just so that you know what you're signing up for.

**Act One, 2008**

Listening to Iz list which members of the basketball team she’d be willing to let commit minor felonies in her name, in exchange for the privilege of getting her off, is not Michael’s idea of a good time. But he and Max have been trying not to leave her alone too often, especially not when other people are around, so this is how he spends his lunch period, most days.

The blackouts have been getting worse. At first it was just a minute here, a half-hour there. But since senior year started, she’s been losing hours, even whole nights sometimes. And for some damn reason, every time the three of them try to reconstruct her steps after, it turns out she spent the missing time with Rosa Ortecho-- a person she has about as much in common with as Michael does with the pretty boys in eyeliner on the front of all of Alex Manes’ obnoxious band tee shirts.

Trust Isobel to make sure that as long she’s having a breakdown, she’s gonna make it as homoerotic as possible. At one point, Michael had half-convinced himself that maybe Max wasn’t the only Evans fixated on an Ortecho sister, and the blackouts were just some kind of self-defense mechanism that Isobel’s super-brain had constructed to avoid a bisexuality crisis. But then he’d made the mistake of answering honestly when his dad asked what had him so distracted he’d almost slammed his hand in the trunk of a Chevy, the Monday after Isobel first lost an entire weekend. That night had ended with all three aliens lined up on the beat-up sofa in the trailer, listening with bowed heads while Sanders put the fear of God into them about bad aliens and mind control and the bits and pieces of freaky-ass stories he’d overheard their moms fret about with Roy back in ‘47 and ‘48, when they thought little ears weren’t around. 

Since then Michael and Max had agreed to stick close to Isobel, so they can notice when her eyes start going that little bit far-off. They’ve gotten pretty good at snapping her out of it when it starts-- Max, especially. As far as sophisticated counterstrategies go, it’s pretty much crap. But considering they don’t know if Iz’s problems are coming from her own brain, or someone else’s, or even if there’s anyone on this planet who can do the stuff that her brain does, it’s also all they got. 

More than once, Michael has let his own unparalleled brain go to town on the buckets of shattered glass out behind the auto shop, thinking about how the only man in this town who might have information that could actually _help_ Isobel is also the number one man they need to make damn sure never finds out about any of them. But given that turning over a cafeteria table with his mind would put a dent in the whole _don’t-let-anyone-see_ plan, that’s a line of thought for another time.

Besides, if Michael can read the dopey half-smile painted across Max’s face, their cover’s in enough danger of getting blown by a not-so-random power outage as it is. Michael follows the line of Max’s vision and sure enough-- Liz Ortecho. Two tables away, talking with her hands about something that happened in AP chem. She hasn’t noticed Max looking yet, but Deluca, who’s sitting across from her, has. She keeps darting glances, her expression switching from amused when she sees Max, to troubled when she sees Isobel. Which makes sense probably, given that as far as Deluca knows, Isobel is the unstable mean girl who keeps monopolizing then ghosting Maria’s BFF. 

Liz and Maria’s third musketeer is at the table, too. Alex. He’s wearing another one of the stupid band tee shirts today, and a necklace shaped like handcuffs, which can’t make tightass Jesse too proud. 

He’s wearing another bruise, too. He’s had this one all week. Michael’s watched it go from black to purple to queasy yellow-green where it wraps almost the whole way around his left wrist. 

Michael’s still watching it when Liz suddenly throws her hands in the air with a groan to punctuate something she just said. Maria laughs at her, happy and loud. Alex grins at both of them while he picks at a cafeteria salad with a fork, and Michael wonders if Liz or Maria have noticed it. The bruise. And how the thick, leather cuff Alex has worn all week to cover it up only draws more attention to it. 

He wonders, not for the first time, whether humans-- even science-brains like Liz and self-professed psychics like Maria-- just don’t _see_ as much as Michael and his people can. 

Or maybe they just don’t watch Alex as closely as Michael does. 

. . . as closely as Michael _has_ to. If he wants to protect to his family.

A guilty ache flares up in Michael’s gut, but before he can think too hard about it, Isobel’s monologue catches his attention again.

“Hold up. Did you just say Gregory _Manes_ ? You’d make a move on Gregory _Manes_?”

Iz hums and licks the yogurt off her plastic spoon with way more enthusiasm than Michael’s comfortable with. “Mm. A girl can dream. If only I hadn’t been a lowly freshman when he graduated. There are some social divides that even _my_ alpha-female mojo can’t overcome.” 

Michael stares at her. “Do you remember the part where his family is literally our number one enemy?”

“Please. Don’t be so _dramatic_ , Michael. I can retroactively admire the cut of his little mesh gym shorts without turning to the dark side.” Isobel flicks a quick glance at where Liz, Maria, and Alex are sitting, her ponytail bouncing as she does. “Besides, like you have any room to talk.”

The knot in Michael’s stomach makes itself known again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Isobel’s smile goes even more devious. “Oh nothing. Just that you don’t seem all that bothered by the fact that Baby Manes hasn’t been able to keep his big brown eyes off of you since last spring.”

All of Michael’s conscious thoughts white-out for half a second, like his system’s trying a hard reset. The thing in his stomach has migrated into his chest by the time his brain comes back online, and grown, too. Michael can recognize a sharp flicker of panic in it now, as well as a low boil of something else. He seizes on the panic.

“Alex? He’s been looking at me? What, like-- like he suspects us or something?”

Isobel rolls her eyes. “Not _looking_ at you. _Staring_ at you. Like your mouth invented tacky wannabe-goth eyeliner.”

When Michael doesn’t say anything, she huffs and gestures to where Max is just barely pretending to be listening to them. “Like _Max_ looks at _Liz_.”

It may not be in keeping with his freaky-alien-genius brand, but the truth is, it takes Michael a sec before Isobel’s point sinks in. 

Like _Max_ looks at _Liz_.

_Alex Manes_ looks at _Michael_ like _Max_ looks at _Liz_.

Then the point does sink in, and it’s . . .

It’s stupid, is Michael’s first-- his _only_ reaction.

_Like Max looks at Liz._

Yeah, not so much. It’s not even possible, first off. And second off, it’s . . . well, there is no second off. Because it’s not possible. Shit. Had Dad said anything about delusions during his bad-news-psychic-bears lecture? ‘Cause Michael’s pretty sure Isobel is in the middle of one right now. 

Michael is grasping for the words to politely inform Isobel that she’s having a psychotic episode, but mostly he’s fruitlessly working his jaw in a way that’s making Isobel look way too pleased with herself. Damn it, he’s gotta shut this dumb conversation down before she goes any deeper into what is clearly a hallucination.

“Alex isn’t even into guys,” is what Michael settles on, to put an end to the discussion.

Except it doesn’t work. It _really_ doesn’t work. Instead of packing up and moving on, Isobel’s face goes on a ten-part journey that ends in her leaning across the table and flicking Michael in the center of his forehead.

“Ow! What the hell, Iz?”

“Just checking if there’s anything in there besides equations and misplaced affection for plaid. Of _course_ Alex is into guys! What do you think Kyle Valenti’s not-at-all-overcompensating crusade against him is all about?”

“I don’t know, maybe the fact that Valenti’s a jackass?”

Michael rubs at the spot where Isobel’s nail hit, focusing on the mostly faded sting instead of the fact that he just reflexively took a Manes’ side. Over Jackass Valenti’s, yeah-- but still.

“Valenti _is_ a jackass,” Isobel agrees readily, apparently not as worried about blurring two generations of battle lines as Michael is. “But more specifically, he’s a homophobic jackass. Seriously, Michael? Even _Max_ knew.”

Max is, surprisingly, actually tuned into their conversation at this point. At Isobel’s expectant gesture he clears his throat and nods deferentially toward the plastic tabletop. “Well. I guess I always assumed . . .”

He trails off with a weird sweep of his hand, like he’s a show model on The Price Is Right or something. Michael’s about to give him hell about how he expects to make good on any of his spank-bank fantasies with Liz, when he’s memorized whole Russian novels’ worth of words, but can’t use any of ‘em to talk about S-E-X. But the dig gets derailed when Michael’s brain makes the short jump from Max’s spank bank to _like Max looks at Liz_ to whether Alex Manes has a spank bank.

And whether Michael’s in it.

The ache that turned into a knot that turned into a burning coal lodged behind Michael’s breastbone over the course of this conversation suddenly detonates. Michael pushes back in his chair, and sniffs-- his ‘angry sniff,’ Isobel calls it. Fine by him, if it gets his point across.

“Well good for Alex,” he says with a sneer. He’s not talking loud enough that other people will be able to hear him, but he’s also not whispering. “Hope he enjoys the parade. But whatever he is, doesn’t make any difference to me. ‘Cause he’s a _Manes_. And the only thing a Manes Man gets to kiss is my ass.”

Isobel tips her head to one side and pretends to look confused. “Did you mean for that to sound as sexual as it did?”

Michael opens his mouth to hit back, but Isobel relents, slouching down in her chair. “ _Fine_. But honestly, I kind of thought that the whole star-crossed lovers thing would be a selling point for you. I mean, what would be better revenge than secretly corrupting Jesse Manes’ precious baby boy with your nasty alien ways?”

Killing Jesse would be better revenge, Michael thinks automatically. Destroying _his_ whole family line. Michael’s thoughts also jump to the angry ring around Alex’s wrist, and just how _precious_ one particular branch of that family line could possibly be to Jesse, when Michael wouldn’t need three guesses to figure out exactly whose hand fits the shape of Alex’s bruises.

But even still, there’s something to Isobel’s offhand remark. It gives him something-- _one_ thing-- in this weird conversation that he’s not afraid to look at too deeply. 

“Michael, that was a _joke_.”

Isobel’s warning cuts through the beginnings of a thought. But that’s fine. Because this particular thought, unlike most of the others he’s dealing with right now, isn’t twisting out of his grasp in five different directions he can’t even see. It’ll keep. 

For a few minutes, anyway.

“Yeah, a joke. Obviously,” he says, getting up from the table without consciously planning to. He darts a quick glance to the clock on the wall as he does. There’s only five minutes left in the period, and Max can babysit Isobel through the rest of lunch. Not like he’d do something useful like actually get up and make his move on Liz, even if Michael _did_ stay. 

“What can I say?” Michael says with his best put-on-a-show grin, as he gathers up his beat-up backpack. “That’s one alien probe that’s never gonna happen.”

“Ew.”

Isobel’s still making a face like she just licked an envelope, and Max has gone back to gazing wistfully at Liz, when Michael raps the table with his knuckles in goodbye and strides away-- a man on a mission. His generally flexible approach toward the school day with its regimented bells and too-easy classes is familiar enough to his sorta-siblings that neither one of them bothers to ask where he’s headed.

Which is a good thing, considering _he’s_ not completely sure where he’s headed-- not consciously, anyway. He just knows that he’s gotta walk-- slowly-- past Alex Manes’ table to get there.

Michael doesn’t stop as he passes, doesn’t talk or make eye contact. Doesn’t even turn back to look for whatever it is he’s looking for, until he’s out the door and obscured from view, pressed against the far side of the doorframe. 

When he does look, his breath catches in his throat. Because even with Michael tucked away in his hiding spot, Alex’s dark eyes immediately find his. Like one of the laser-guided toys that Jesse and his military buddies use to try and control everyone and everything they’re afraid of.

Michael freezes, tries to keep his breathing shallow. Whatever he was looking for, this moment feels like mission success and mission failure, all rolled into one.

It feels weirdly familiar, too-- the weight of Alex’s gaze. Like Michael’s body had gotten used to it somewhere along the line, without ever bothering to clue Michael’s brain into its existence.

Across the room, Alex’s eyes narrow, his eyebrows creeping in toward center. Then, without warning, he drops his gaze toward the table, where only one of his hands-- the one without the bruise-- is visible. 

Michael’s unusually sluggish pulse goes back to its normal quicker-than-human pace after that. His thoughts pick back up, too. They’ve coalesced on a destination, apparently, while Michael was putting Isobel’s crackpot theory to the test.

Before he goes, Michael risks one more glance at Alex, who’s still staring, pink-cheeked, at the table top like it’s taking all of his effort. 

Huh. All right. Music room it is, then.

  
  


#

  
  


It only takes a period and a half for Alex to find him. 

Michael _should_ be in Calc BC right now. Of all his boring classes, it’s the one he’s least likely to skip, usually. Ms. Ortiz has an okay sense of humor and she doesn’t make it a big thing when he reads ahead while she goes ‘round and ‘round over the same dumb questions with everyone else. But it’s a beautiful spring day, and Michael’s got a couple thick blankets stowed in the bed of the old junker that his dad’s helping him nurse back to health, so he’s sitting in the bed of his truck out behind the bleachers, enjoying the sun, with Alex Manes’ guitar lying across his lap.

Michael’s never held a guitar before. Never held any instrument before, ‘cept maybe a kazoo or something in elementary school. He kinda likes the feel of it. 

Not that that’s a huge surprise to him. 

Something that most people don’t know about Michael is that he actually really likes music. He didn’t grow up hearing a lot of it; his dad is more of a yell-at-the-TV guy than a let’s-kick-back-and-play-some-records bro. But music’s always cut through all the background noise for Michael, wherever he has found it. 

There’s the whiskey-and-heartbreak stuff that plays on the fuzzy radio at the shop, and the all-Spanish-language station that the truck’s tuner is stuck on. There’s the peppy Top 40 that comes in through the ceiling speakers, mixed with the older, jangling, big-feelings stuff that Rosa puts on the jukebox, when Max drags Michael and Isobel to the Crashdown so he can pretend to like mint milkshakes. 

There’s even the stuff on the loaded-up ipod that Michael won’t admit he listens to while he falls asleep every night. Isobel bought the ipod for him, slapped her and Max’s names on it, and called it their gift to Michael for their shared seventeenth birthday. Michael had pitched a fit at the time, letting his temper get the better of him-- ‘cause Isobel and Max’s gift had cost more than any four gifts his dad had ever been able to afford, and Iz can talk all she wants about putting it on Mommy’s platinum card, but no one likes feelin’ like someone else’s charity case. At least, Michael doesn’t. He can’t kid himself that he doesn’t like being able to put the earbuds in and drift off to something other than his own thoughts, though. He’s never added anything to the ipod’s library himself, so he cycles again and again through everything Iz thought to put on there: the Taylor Swift that’s on non-stop rotation on her own car stereo, the Counting Crows and Red Hot Chili Peppers that Michael tries not to realize she probably picked up from Rosa, and a whole rodeo of sensitive acoustic dudes that could only come from Max. 

Much as Michael hates to admit, the acoustic guys are his favorite, too-- just a voice and a guitar and everything else in the world gone quiet.

The thing with music is that, unlike most things that humans make, Michael can appreciate it without getting stuck on how much better it could be, if only humans weren’t so limited. Humans may not be able to read minds or set off electrical sparks or move things without touching them, but somehow they can make something that does all of that, with just a piece of wood and six strings. 

Part of Michael has always wondered whether that’s a kind of magic he could learn from humans. But there’s not exactly room in the Sanders Family budget for fancy handcrafted experiments-- and anyway if Michael mentioned wanting to learn, his dad would end up scrimping and saving on stuff _he_ needs just to make it happen, which is the last thing Michael wants.

No cost in living the dream _now_ , though.

He gives the strings of Alex’s guitar a few experimental strums. He likes the vibration of it, even though it doesn’t sound like much. The quiet is kinda nice, actually. 

The guitar itself is chipped in a couple spots, which seems like a waste, considering the _Manes_ Family budget doesn’t seem to be hurting any. But then Michael can hardly be surprised by a Manes being careless with something breakable. 

He wraps his hand loosely around the guitar’s graceful neck, pressing his fingers down on the frets like he’s seen on TV, even though he’s got no idea where they’re supposed to be landing. He extends his ring finger a little, reaches for a spot that looks-- that feels right, where the shiny wood under the strings has oval smudges.

This position would hurt like hell with a busted wrist, he’d bet. 

The thought makes him frown, and before he knows it, the fingers of his right hand are moving up to stroke carefully over the deepest of the nicks on the wood’s upper swell.

At least, they are until the guitar is snatched out of his hold.

“What the hell, Sanders? You can’t just take instruments from the music room. This is _mine_.”

Michael looks up from his now empty hands to take in almost six feet of pure Manes outrage.

Alex has pulled a red and black sweater over his band tee shirt since lunch, even though the temperature’s been rising all day. It does a better job covering up his bruises than the leather cuff alone did, but not by much. His dark hair is sticking up in a hundred directions now, too-- although Michael can’t tell if that’s from pulling the sweater on, or if it’s a style thing, or if it’s just ‘cause Alex is so pissed his whole body’s practically shaking with it.

‘Cause-- no doubt about it, this is Alex in full righteous-warrior mode. Michael’s never seen it up close before. Sure, he’s stood a couple blocks of lockers away, and watched the grim fury that sits low on Alex’s brow when he runs his mouth at Valenti and his henchmen, slicing through the braindead loops that their digs always seem to run in. Michael’s seen him shoulder past a jock who thought it’d be funny to try to stop him from using the guys' bathroom, and stand up spitting murder after getting cross-checked on the track in gym class. Michael’s even been on the wrong end of Alex’s rolling eyes and quick retorts himself a couple times-- in class, or the one time he still thinks about occasionally, on the side of an empty highway. But it’s never felt like this.

Michael’s not sure anything’s ever felt like this. 

There’s a kick in Michael’s pulse that must come from suddenly being so aware that Alex really is a Manes Man, for all he likes to play up how he’s the black sheep. The awareness makes what’s going to happen next harder but also easier. 

Harder because even a guy as charming as Michael can be isn’t gonna do his best work while he’s wondering how many of his kind met their end facing down this same thundercloud stare. 

Easier because-- well, because Alex’s last name is the only reason Michael’s even thinking about doing this in the first place, isn’t it? It’s the reason that this plan that Michael’s suddenly cooked up isn’t just some prank on the outsider kid, or, or-- using someone, for how they maybe feel about Michael. Michael doesn’t have to like Alex back for this to be justified. Not when the Manes Men took Michael’s _mom_. Not when they took the pieces of the ship that brought Michael to this tumble-down planet, and they took the other crash survivors who maybe could have told Michael why Isobel sometimes wakes up two towns over curled up in the backseat of Rosa’s car. Not when they’ll keep on guarding the secrets they’ve already stolen and hunting for more. And Michael will never even be able to see what they’re up to, and will never see what’s coming. Unless--

_Maybe._

Unless maybe Michael can keep his friends close and his enemy closer.

Assuming his enemy wants to get closer, that is. ‘Cause Michael was feeling pretty good about his chances after his little experiment in the cafeteria, but right now Alex is looking at him like he usually only looks at the dicks who follow him around between classes giving him crap about if he’s asking anyone to the Sadie Hawkins Dance. It’s kinda making Michael feel like Isobel really was talking out of her ass at lunch. 

He’s racing through his options in his mind. He pauses just long enough to lick his lips, which went dry sometime around the moment he looked up to see Alex standing over him in the sunlight. And then-- _bam_ , just like clockwork, Alex’s burning gaze dips down. As it does, the tight furl of his eyebrows relaxes so slightly Michael almost wonders if he imagined it.

But he didn’t imagine it. ‘Cause a heartbeat passes and Alex Manes is still standing there, frozen in place. 

Staring at Michael’s mouth.

A shot of something buzzing and hot rips through Michael’s whole body. It’s adrenaline-- it must be. 

Moment of truth, he tells himself. Then makes that mouth that’s holding so much of Alex’s attention curl up into an easy smirk.

“Sorry. Had to borrow it,” he drawls, nodding at the guitar in Alex’s hand. 

Alex looks down at it, like he’d forgotten it was there.

“What for?”

Michael lets his smile go a little wider. “How else was I supposed to get you to come find me?”

Alex just blinks, stupid, at the obvious come-on. It wouldn’t exactly be a flattering reaction, except that Michael can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen anything make Alex Manes look _stupid_.

“Find. What? You wanted _me_ to find you?”

Alex is talkin’ in short little barks, like he does when he wants to seem like he’s got things under control, and Michael can’t help but relax a little into the smile he’s been faking. He decides to go in for the kill.

He leans back on one arm and tilts his head to one side, knowing how it always makes Isobel’s friends coo and reach out to play with his curls, when they’ve all had one too many pilfered wine coolers from the back of Ann’s fridge. “Yeah, Alex. _You_.”

“Why.”

Alex doesn’t so much coo as squint, his tone going even more flat and suspicious, but Michael doesn’t let that deter him. “ ‘Cause you got somethin’ I need.”

“And what’s that.”

“Whaddya think, darlin’?”

Michael has seen angry Alex and resigned Alex, has (like any decent spy) tried to memorize the tells that mean one is about to turn into the other-- and so far failed at it, ‘cause apparently Alex’s microexpressions don’t give a damn about Michael’s superior intellect. 

The Alex that’s thinking about how to answer Michael’s lazy question isn’t one that Michael can say he’s ever seen before. His eyes are narrow and intent, like angry Alex, but he’s holding himself too still, like resigned Alex-- his shoulders freezing where they’ve turtled up around his ears. He’s worrying his bottom lip with his teeth in a way that _almost_ makes Michael miss the fact that he’s shifted the guitar in his arms so that it’s shielding his abdomen.

But Michael doesn’t miss anything, not really. And that move, more than anything, cements it for him. 

This is _scared_ Alex. 

Michael breaks his himbo pose so fast he almost knocks his chin on the tailgate. He ends up half-crouched forward on his knees, one hand flapping in the direction of the guitar that Alex is playing hide-and-seek with.

“Lessons!” 

Alex’s eyebrows pull even closer together at the blurted-out exclamation, but he loses the hunted look, which is-- good. This is a smart adjustment in strategy, that Michael is making. That’s all.

“You want . . . guitar lessons?”

Michael nods, happy to grab onto the rope he’s being handed. Backing off is definitely the smart move; he’s calling it. The change in approach has nothing to do with the way it made Michael’s stomach hurt, the idea of being a person Alex is afraid of. Or, it does. But because Alex being afraid of him is bad for the plan. In fact, Michael should have realized his mistake from the start; probably would have if he’d thought the plan over a little longer before diving right in like usual. Alex is a private guy, isn’t he? And the jerks who make his life hell think it’s frickin’ hilarious to pretend to ask him to homecoming. It was a bad calculation to come in hot-and-heavy. 

No, Michael’s gonna have to play this as a long game, if he wants to make sure that Alex feels safe.

Which he needs Alex to feel. For the plan to work. 

“Yup-- guitar lessons. Always wanted to learn; figured now’s as good a time as any. And I figure-- you’re always in the music room, you must know a thing or two, right? I can pay you,” he adds without quite planning to, then immediately starts running the numbers on what he takes in as tips at the shop, minus Max’s Crashdown habit and the weekly offering to the envelope in the drawer where he keeps his UNM course catalog. “Not much. But somethin.’”

Alex still looks dubious, but his shoulders have relaxed-- as much as they ever do. And the guitar’s back down at his side. So Michael’s not too worried when he keeps on giving Michael the third degree.

“Aren’t there other people who could teach you? Like, actual music teachers?”

Thinking fast isn’t something Michael has to work at; it’s just the speed he’s set to. So he’s grinning at Alex as soon as Alex finishes the question, like they’re sharing a secret. “Sure. But you know this town. It’d all be cowboy crap. I wanna learn real music.”

Truth is, Michael doesn’t really have a problem with country-western. But he’s betting Alex does. 

The twitch at the corner of Alex’s mouth says Michael’s wager was a good one. But Alex still gestures at Michael with his nose and says, “Is ‘cowboy crap’ not your thing?”

Michael looks down at his old jeans and his rolled-up flannel and the leather boots that used to be his dad’s. He looks back up at Alex, whose eyebrows are hovering somewhere between teasing and knowing. So, he caught Michael’s bluff after all. 

Michael tips his head, accepting the call-out. He keeps up the act, though. 

“This?” he picks at the threadbare flannel. “Nah. This ain’t cowboy. It’s broke-ass mechanic. Big difference.”

“Right.” Alex presses his lips together. “So. What kind of music does a ‘broke-ass mechanic’ want to play?”

It would take someone a lot slower-- and a lot less observant-- than Michael not to recognize the challenge in the line of Alex’s jaw. 

Michael thinks about the tee shirt hiding beneath Alex’s angry-looking sweater. There are definitely safe answers here. But Michael’s gotten this far by following his gut-- or whatever his people have in the place of that, that keeps him up with its talking half the night and makes it impossible to sit still and listen to someone drone on and on about Romeo & Juliet when there are a million problems that he could be solving just between here and the nearest galaxy. Just between here and the nearest township. 

Right now, that voice is telling him it’s time for another calculated risk.

He thinks about lying in his bed at night, the universe he comes from reduced to a human voice, a piano, a guitar. He tilts his head and squints when the angle makes the mid-afternoon sun catch in his lashes. “You know any Bright Eyes?”

Alex’s eyes widen, just for a beat. “That is . . . not what I thought you’d say.”

Michael shrugs. “There’s more to me than you know, Manes.”

Alex stops. He gives Michael’s words more careful consideration than Michael had thought he would. 

More careful consideration than Michael actually wants him to.

“Yeah,” he finally nods. “I guess that’s true.”

Michael breathes out a sigh of relief, but tries to make it sound like a cough.

It works-- enough, anyway. They make plans for Thursday after school, and Alex nods, turning back toward the building when the warning bell sounds. 

He carries his guitar like a baby as he goes, his shoulders inching up higher every step he takes toward the crowd. 

Every step he takes away from Michael.

  
  


#

  
  


Most of the time, they end up driving Michael’s truck out into the desert and having their lessons there. Just two guys in the back of a pick-up truck with no adult supervision and nothing but sand and scrub brush around to hear what they get up to. 

It was Michael’s idea, and, as usual, it was a genius move. Even though so far, all that the sand and scrub are hearin’ from him and Alex are guitar chords.

Alex had suggested that they have their lessons in some old toolshed out behind his house instead, but Michael had vetoed that idea on the spot, ‘cause a beat-up shed doesn’t exactly say ‘seduction.’ And besides, Michael’s not going within a hundred yards of any place where he’s likely to wind up as a shrunken head in a jar on Jesse Manes’ desk.

That choice was not at cross-purposes with his bigger mission here, Michael has decided.

Is his whole reason for going after Alex to eventually infiltrate the Manes fortress, learn their secrets? Yeah. Duh. But emphasis on _eventually_. Jumping in without enough recon is just dumb; Isobel and Max would agree with him if Michael believed he could tell them anything about what he’s doing with Alex without them freaking out. 

The better plan, obviously, is to go slow, get Alex to trust him. Get Alex to more than trust him, even. Enough that he’ll start letting things slip, and then Michael will have a window into Jesse Manes’ world that doesn’t actually require him to step foot on Jesse Manes’ property. 

The only downside to Michael’s plan is time, but there’s no getting around that: the Manes Men have a fifty-year jump on hunting Michael’s people, which Michael spent chilling out in an egg full of space goo that the Maneses can’t ever find, forgetting everything that might have actually helped him. Looking for shortcuts now isn’t going to erase that advantage; it’s just gonna get Michael killed.

“No-- you’re letting your index finger slide down again. You need to press harder.”

Alex’s steady voice reminds Michael that some people might say there’s one other downside to Michael’s plan. Depending on what side they sit on.

That other downside has to do with what happens when Alex puts his hand on top of Michael’s to fix the problem as he’s diagnosed it. Sure enough, as soon as skin touches skin, a pretty pink flush spreads over his high cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. 

It’s not just the desert sun. That excuse coulda fooled Michael one time, especially with how the unfiltered light turns Alex’s skin gold all over and brings out the strands of chestnut hidin’ in his black hair. But it keeps happening every time Michael plays dumb and makes hash out of an easy chord, until Alex finally sighs and leans over to tangle their fingers against the fretboard. 

Alex can’t touch Michael without turning red, just like he can’t look at Michael without getting lost somewhere around Michael’s lips, and can’t laugh at Michael’s corny lines without showing off the dimples he keeps for a rainy day. 

So, yeah, depending on their perspective on all of that, _some people_ might think that another downside of Michael’s plan is that it’s gonna end with Alex’s broken heart.

But, maybe, if those people’s family had been rounded up and shot by Alex’s family just for running for their lives and then crash-landing where they shouldn’t have, those people would think that Alex getting his feelings hurt wasn’t really a downside so much as acceptable collateral damage.

They might even think it was justice.

Michael shifts uncomfortably against the bed of the truck. Even with the blankets down, it’s not exactly a cushy seat. The movement makes Alex stop explaining how Michael’s mixing up D and D minor-- like that’s a mistake Michael would _actually_ make if he were trying to learn for real-- and look up at Michael with big concerned eyes. 

“You okay?”

Michael nods, and waits to see if it’ll sink in for Alex, how close their noses are to touching right now. 

He can tell when it does, ‘cause Alex’s lips part while his throat works hard around a swallow. The only thing missing to make this moment a kiss is for Alex to lean in and let it be one. 

Just like every time this has happened out here in the middle of nowhere, Michael concentrates as hard as he can on spontaneously evolving Isobel’s power. 

And just like every time, it doesn’t work and Alex is left to his own free will, which always tells him to break the eye contact and pull away from Michael. 

Every. Damn. Time. 

So maybe all those hypothetical people losing sleep over Alex’s supposed heartbreak can get off of Michael’s back for a minute. ‘Cause whatever crush or fascination Alex has, it’s not like he’s in any damn hurry to actually get any closer to Michael. Not even when Michael’s throwing himself at Alex.

_Pretending_ to throw himself at Alex.

Michael breathes out through his nose and hits the D minor perfectly, and then the four bars after for good measure.

Alex’s eyebrows shoot up, but he nods. “Wow, okay. Good. That’s good, Michael. I think you got it.”

Michael doesn’t say that he had this song down two lessons ago, by the time Alex played through the first verse and chorus to show Michael and then started on the second, singing under his breath in a way that lets Michael know he could really sing if he let loose, even though he’s mostly just mumbling along to keep time during their lessons. 

Michael wonders if Alex will ever _really_ sing for him. He wonders if Alex will ever _really_ do a lot of things that Michael wants him to. ‘Cause Michael may be committed to the slow road here, but him and Isobel and Max’s lives _are_ kinda riding on this plan of Michael’s succeeding.

And also.

Alex doesn’t _know_ that Michael’s just pretending, does he? Which means that--

Screw it. Maybe Michael’s an asshole for thinking it, but so what? 

Alex doesn’t know Michael’s just pretending, which means that it hurts. Michael’s ego. It hurts Michael’s ego knowing that Alex would keep pulling away, if things were different. If they weren’t both who they are.

If Michael was doing this for real.

“How about a lover I don’t have to love?”

Michael’s gaze shoots up, guilty, at Alex’s question. “Huh?”

“Lover I Don’t Have to Love? By Bright Eyes? Y’know. Your favorite.” Alex cracks a small smile to show he’s teasing. “I know the piano chords, and I was working on figuring it out for guitar the other day. I thought maybe that could be your next song?” 

Alex’s own bright eyes make Michael feel ashamed for some reason. So he pastes his best smile over the feeling. “Yeah, sounds awesome. Anyway, it’s getting late. I should drive you back.”

The sun’s setting by the time they get back to Roswell city limits. At Alex’s request, Michael drops Alex three blocks from Jesse’s house.

Alex lingers for a minute by the driver’s side window, lit up by the orange sky behind him. He stands there readjusting the strap of his guitar, like maybe he’s working up the nerve to lean up and kiss Michael goodbye.

He doesn’t. 

  
  


#

  
  


A couple weeks into the lessons, Alex brings Michael a guitar that’s even more beat-up than his own, saying maybe Michael would like to hold onto it so that he can practice at home.

Michael has to make himself not flinch back when Alex says that it was his brother’s.

“Do all your brothers play?” he asks instead, running his hands appreciatively over the instrument, even as he tries not to think about which of the older Maneses’ hands held it before.

“We all learned. My mom taught us.”

It’s a perfect opening to finally start getting some _real_ information. Like, who is the elusive former Mrs. Jesse Manes (and how does anyone-- let alone a smart lady from the Rez-- end up becoming _that_ )? Is she a pressure point for Jesse-- assuming he even has those? What does she know about what Jesse’s been doin’ to rack up so many medals without hardly ever leaving Nowhere, New Mexico all these years?

But in the end Michael can’t bring himself to ask. He tells himself it’s because of the sucker punch of jealousy he feels at the idea of Alex having had a mom who taught him to play music, even just for a little while, when Alex’s family made damn sure Michael would never have anything like that. But the loud parts of his mind say that maybe it’s also because of how sad Alex looks every time he talks about his family, and how much easier it is for Michael to breathe when Alex is smiling.

Good thing there’s a sure-fire way to shut up the noise inside of him. And that there’s already a guitar in Michael’s hand.

He starts strumming.

  
  


#

  
  


The nice thing about Alex and Michael both having their own guitars is that they can play together. The pretext of lessons started to break down a while back, so now they mostly spend their afternoons in the desert just riffing. For hours, sometimes, when Michael can get away from the garage and Alex doesn’t have a shift at the UFO Emporium and knows Jesse will be at the base ‘til late. Until the stars start poking through and Michael’s going hoarse from his pitchy efforts at harmonizing with Alex’s half-hummed lead on every song.

Alex still hasn’t kissed him, though.

They get to the end of Thank You for the Venom-- Alex’s pick-- and Alex leans back against the tailgate, smiling calm and easy. He’s almost-- _almost_ \-- slouching. 

Michael, sprawled against the other tailgate, feels a little proud, in spite of himself.

Turns out he’s not the only one.

“You’re really good, you know,” Alex tells him, one hand coming up to rub at his ball-chain necklace. “You’re a natural.”

Michael sniffs. “Nah. Just had a good teacher.”

Alex _is_ a good teacher. Michael hadn’t really thought about how the mechanics of the “guitar lessons” would work out when he tripped his way into that excuse for keeping Alex close, but it makes sense that Alex’s style would work for Michael. He’s a stickler and he doesn’t pull punches, which Michael appreciates. But he’s also patient. And he cares. He cares enough to give Michael one of the last things in the Manes house that Alex’s mom brought there, just to help Michael learn better.

He still won’t kiss Michael, though.

“Do you think you’ll keep playing? After school’s over?”

“After school’s over” is a timeframe that keeps coming up more and more in the conversations that happen around Michael, now that prom’s just a couple days away. Michael himself hasn’t given it much thought, beyond trying to slip a couple extra bucks into his UNM envelope when he can. But he feels his forehead pinch at the realization that “after school’s over” might also be an end date on these long afternoons in the desert with Alex.

On Michael’s plan.

“Yeah, why not?” he says, nice and easy, making himself breathe through the stab of panic. “Couple years from now, maybe I’ll start a dad band or something.” 

The corners of Alex’s eyes crinkle. “A dad band, huh? You think you’ll be a dad?”

The thought kindles warm and low in Michael’s chest, like it usually does. He doesn’t just think he’ll be a dad. He knows he will. He thinks sometimes about what his life would have looked like without _his_ dad, in the universe where after the Evanses came by the group home and picked up the two cutest pound puppies, no else had shown. It’s not exactly his _favorite_ thing to think about, because he doesn’t like the shape he sees for himself in that universe. But when he does force himself to think about it, it makes him feel sure that he wants to be the one who shows up for some other kid some day-- not much to look at, with the cheap jeans and the grease under his nails. But ready to do what it takes to make sure his kid knows what it is to grow up loved. He thinks maybe Alex could appreciate the value in that.

At the thought, he looks down at the guitar in his lap, uncharacteristically bashful. These secret desert meet-ups are supposed to be where Michael peels back Alex’s layers and finds everything that Alex is guarding, not the other way around. So when he looks back up, he just shrugs and says, “Can’t let these smokin’ hot genes go to waste, can I?” 

Alex knocks his foot against Michael’s leg with a smile, like he knows Michael’s lying, and Michael tries to force himself to remember that any child of Michael’s would spend their whole life running scared from whichever of Alex’s relations takes over the family business. 

Running scared from Alex himself, maybe.

The happy little fire in Michael’s chest dims, but Alex doesn’t seem to notice. “What else do you want to be? When this is over?” he asks.

“Spaceman,” Michael answers without missing a beat. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding when Alex just rolls his eyes. “Race car driver?” he tries again. “Underwear model.”

Alex shakes his head and moves to hop over the side of the truck, maybe to climb in the cab and signal to Michael that he’s ready to go, but probably just to range over the rocks like he does sometimes. Michael knows he’s not actually pissed, ‘cause he keeps having to press his lips together to keep from smiling. Michael reaches out for him anyway. 

If they’re running out of time--

If Michael’s plan is running out of time. Then Michael doesn’t want to lose any.

“I wanna build things,” Michael admits, once he’s used a hand on Alex’s elbow to settle him back down on the blanket spread beneath them. His palm feels warmer when he pulls it away.

“Like an engineer?”

Michael nods. “I wanna make stuff that no one else can. Stuff that can do things that people need but can’t do now.”

“Like what?”

Alex is cross-legged, leaning forward, dark eyes intent. Michael wonders if Jesse has ever thought about how much easier it could be, getting information from his supposed enemies, if he just sent in someone to ask questions and give a damn about the answers, instead of burning down farms and shooting up ladies with kids. Then Michael wonders if Jesse _taught_ Alex how to look like this during an interrogation. Taught him to look like he cares. 

That second thought doesn’t sit right with Michael, so he pushes it away.

“I used to think a lot about makin’ stuff that can fly,” he answers Alex, choosing his words carefully.

Alex nods. “Yeah, I know. Your notebooks were always covered with sketches of wings.”

“You saying you were watchin’ me, Manes?”

Alex huffs and blows off Michael’s question, but he also blushes. “So what do you want to build now? Or do you still want to fly away?”

Michael’s answer catches in his throat. He’s half-tempted to ask Alex whether _he_ ’s the one who wants to fly away. ‘Cause Alex’s cheeks are pink and he’s tugging at that dumb necklace and he never looks away. But. Alex. Still. Hasn’t. Kissed. Michael. And Michael’s not sure why that would be, after weeks of Alex’s longing looks and Michael doing everything he can to make Alex see that Michael would welcome him with open arms. To make Alex _think_ that, he means.

The only reason Michael can think for why Alex still isn’t making a move, after all that, is that Alex plans on putting everything about Roswell in his rearview mirror soon-- including Michael-- and already has one leg out the door.

Alex’s head tilts like a dog’s at whatever he’s able to see chasing itself across Michael’s face. He opens his mouth to ask another question, but Michael cuts him off.

“Not flyin’ anywhere,” he says, with maybe too much of an effort to sound casual. “Lately I’ve been thinkin’-- there’s plenty of stuff right here on the ground that could use some TLC.”

Michael doesn’t mean to, but his eyes dart to Alex’s still-purple little finger while he answers. Alex had the finger in a splint last week; luckily it was his strumming hand and not his fret hand. He never told Michael what happened to it.

He didn’t need to.

Michael’s pulse feels like it’s hammering in his throat, for some reason, and his mouth feels dry when he meets Alex’s eyes again and asks, “What about you? What do you want to do after all this?”

He braces himself for the answer he knows is coming. There’s a seamstress somewhere who could probably stay in business just by sewin’ new bars onto Manes Men’s jackets. And Alex-- Alex is smart and stands his ground and takes in everything around him before he makes a decision. Alex is the military’s dream, and every nucleotide of his DNA must know that. That much legacy ain’t givin’ up without a fight, no matter how much Alex hates his dad. Eventually every Manes kid becomes Private Manes, even the odd men out. And every Private Manes hunts aliens. And from there, it’s just a matter of time until the military’s dream becomes Michael’s worst nightmare, sitting in some bunker somewhere drawing bullseyes on pictures of Isobel and Max.

But here and now, Alex finds a way to surprise Michael. Again.

“I want to make music.”

Alex says it like it’s a declaration. Maybe he thinks it is. But even Michael’s freaky genius brain can’t build a bridge that goes all the way to what Alex is describing, from where Michael has always known Alex is going. 

Sure, Michael can imagine a peaceful future for Alex. A grown-up Alex with soft sweaters and maybe a little less eyeliner, singing his heart out like he never has for Michael, showing small hands where to hold a guitar. 

But Michael can’t square _that_ Alex with fifty years of Manes Men torching everything they don’t understand, who live inside of Alex whether he wants them to or not.

But Michael _has_ to square his Alex-- _this_ Alex. With the Manes legacy. That’s the whole reason he and Alex are here. Alone. Together. In the first place.

So Michael throws back his shoulders and makes himself face the long shadow between them.

“Thought Manes Men all served. Not much time for music in basic.”

Alex shakes his head before Michael’s even done talking. “I won’t be a solider in my father’s war,” he tells Michael.

It sounds like a promise, and it melts something that’s been holdin’ tight inside of Michael. That thing in Michael’s chest loosens up just enough to let him wonder what he’s never let himself wonder before, about this mission he’s given himself. About whether it could maybe have a different ending. One where the Manes legacy is dismantled, but no one’s heart gets broken along the way. One where they tear it down _together_.

One where Alex _knows_ him.

One where Michael _tells_ him.

With Alex’s voice echoing in his head, Michael could almost believe it’s possible.

Michael barrels forward into Alex’s space without thinking and pushes their foreheads together. Alex’s eyes go wide, but he doesn’t move away. 

He doesn’t come any closer, either.

They stay like that, for a while. Michael doesn’t lose track of the time, but that’s ‘cause he wasn’t tryin’ to track it in the first place. He’s too busy feeling the flimsy little tendrils that have been just barely keeping him tethered to this hard, slow planet for ten years-- mostly by wrapping tight around his dad and Max and Isobel-- suddenly reach down into the earth and find purchase. Rooting him. 

It makes sense. The Manes Men took it on themselves to make sure people like Michael would never hurt this planet. And Alex is the best of them.

Michael risks bringing a hand to cup the back of Alex’s neck, and watches as black lashes fall on sharp cheekbones. He wonders how long he’s been watching Alex like _this_ without realizing it, that he’s not even surprised at how soft they look.

_Kiss me, Alex_ , he thinks, hard as he can. And this time, he doesn’t wish for Isobel’s powers to make it happen. He wants Alex to make it happen all on his own.

But of course, Alex doesn’t.

“We should leave before the storm comes in,” Alex finally breathes instead, each word kicking up a shiver across Michael’s skin.

Michael frowns. “What storm? There’s nothin’ in the forecast.” 

“I know.” Alex eyes are closed so tight. Michael doesn’t know what it would take to open ‘em. “It’s just-- it smells like rain.”

  
  


#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UP NEXT: Some things-- like senior year-- end with a bang _and_ a whimper.


	3. Act One, part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Michael doesn’t think Max’d appreciate hearing that it’s too late to be worried about Michael at this point, so he just shakes his head instead. “I’ve been secret-fake-dating Alex for like two months now. I think I can live with spending one more day in his company.”_
> 
> _Michael would pretty much live_ for _it, actually. But Max doesn’t need to know that, either._
> 
> _“Yeah. But could you live with him never forgiving you, if he finds out you’re using him to get to his family?”_
> 
> Senior year, part two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we come to the end of the first act of Michael and Alex's relationship. As in the show, the ending hurts. But the story's not over yet . . .
> 
> *SPECIFIC WARNING* Please be aware that in this chapter, as in canon, Jesse Manes finds Alex and Michael together and inflicts violence on them-- of the same form/extent as he does in canon. I have tried to avoid gratuitous descriptions of his violence here, but as this story takes place in Michael's POV, Michael's thoughts and feelings during and after Jesse's attack are discussed. Please take care of yourself and as always, I'm happy to provide answers to specific questions (including sections to skip entirely, if desired) in comments.

The next time they’re in the desert-- the last time before everything changes-- they’ve only got Michael’s guitar with them, ‘cause they’re coming straight from their shit show of a prom, and Michael keeps the guitar tucked beneath the truck’s passenger seat, where his dad won’t see it and ask questions. 

They hadn’t gone to prom together, obviously. But Michael had kept an eye out, even when he was smiling for the cheesy pictures that Isobel (and secretly Dad) wanted. So he saw it when Jackass Valenti and his crew decided to push Alex until Alex pushed back with more than words this time. When Alex had stormed out after, holding the fist he’d thrown at Valenti away from his body like he couldn’t trust it anymore, Michael hadn’t been able to stop himself from following. He’d spared one look for Max before he went, to make sure that Isobel wouldn’t be by herself, if she started having another blackout like she’d had every other night this week. Max hadn’t said anything, but the way he’d looked at Michael, confused but getting less so every second. . . 

The only time Michael has been able to stop thinking about that look is right is now, with his hands on the strings and Alex’s lightning-strike eyes on him.

He sings, even though he’s no Alex, and the best he can do with a tune is just barely get it from Point A to Point B. But that doesn’t matter, not when he’s looking at Alex and Alex is looking at him, and neither one of them can look away. 

“You really do love Bright Eyes,” Alex says, after the last notes die out. He’s got his legs tented in front of him and he tips his head back to look up into the stars-- maybe looking at where Michael comes from, without even knowing it. The shiny jacket he’d worn to the dance is hanging open around his neck, the sleeves pushed up almost to his elbows. 

Michael bumps his shoulder against Alex’s. “Told ya I wasn’t just a dumb cowboy.”

Alex nods, his eyes dropping back down to earth, back down to Michael’s. They continue on down into his lap, where his hand is lying.

He flexes the knuckles, slowly.

“You should let me take you somewhere to get ice for that.”

It’s worth another try, Michael thinks. But Alex shakes his head, just like he had on the drive out here.

“I shouldn’t have hit him.”

“He hit you first.” 

“Yeah.” Alex laughs, but not like it’s funny. “He did. You know, he was my best friend when we were little?”

Michael’s blood boils a little, while he wonders whether Valenti knows what Jesse does to Alex and decided to deck Alex for standing up to him anyway, or if Valenti’s just one more human too stupid to see what’s right in front of them.

“People change. They start out one thing and end up somethin’ else.”

Michael puts a little too much feeling into the words, but how can he not, when he wants them to be true too much? 

“You didn’t.”

Alex’s words freeze Michael, making his fingers tighten around the guitar Alex gave him.

“With Isobel and Max, I mean,” Alex finishes. “You three have been close since you were little. And you haven’t changed toward them.”

Michael forces his fingers to unclench. Alex still doesn’t suspect him, then. It’s just Michael’s own guilty conscience flaring up-- the one that’s spent the past three nights yelling about what would happen to Michael’s new daydreams about how the two of them could win, together, if Alex ever found out why Michael  _ really  _ stole his guitar from the music room that day in April. 

About whether Alex would believe Michael, if he told Alex that everything’s different now. 

About whether Alex would run screaming before Michael could even get that far, at the knowledge of what Michael is.

Alex reads Michael’s silence the wrong way, and lets their shoulders rub together again. “Sorry. I know you don’t talk about them much. I wasn’t trying to pry.”

It wouldn’t have made sense for Michael to talk about his siblings much with Alex, would it? When up until a few days ago Michael still thought he was only giving Alex the time of day to  _ protect  _ them from Alex. 

Michael puts the guitar down gently and hops over the tailgate. “It’s not perfect-- me and Max and Isobel.” He jams his hands in the pockets of the jacket Iz rented for him and tries not to think about why, if Michael’s intentions toward Alex are so different than they were before, he still needs space between him and Alex when he talks about his siblings. “There’s things I know they don’t tell me. And there’s stuff I can’t tell them.”

Alex has turned his whole body so he can face where Michael is pacing across the sand. The obvious question--  _ what stuff? _ \-- is painted across his face. 

_ You _ , Michael thinks.  _ You’re the stuff I can’t tell Max and Iz, can’t tell my dad. ‘Cause I don’t know if they’d be more disappointed about what I thought I was doing when you and me started, or about how I feel about you now _ .

But Alex said he wouldn’t pry and Alex is a man of his word. So he doesn’t ask the question. He picks at the knee of his tux instead. “Isobel . . . She’s been spending a lot of time with Rosa this past year.”

Michael’s half-way to answering that actually Iz hasn’t been with Rosa as much the past few weeks; that now Michael and Max find her wandering the desert alone as often as not, like whatever’s happening inside her head has shifted, and the thing that was telling her to seek out Rosa has gotten bored or maybe given up and been replaced by something bigger, that makes her start walking out toward something she can’t name. But then Michael remembers who he’s talking to, and he stops in his tracks.

He doesn’t mean to. It makes his stomach hurt, that he does. But he can’t help it. Because this is Alex.  _ His  _ Alex. But it’s also a Manes Man. Wanting to know about what’s going on with Isobel.

“Maria asked me the other day if I thought they were . . . together.”

“Thought you weren’t gonna pry.” 

Michael snaps the words out, and it makes Alex flinch back. But like usual with Alex, he doesn’t cower for long.

“I’m  _ not  _ prying. You’re Isobel’s friend. I just-- I don’t know if she knows what people are saying. Or if she cares.”

“Do  _ you  _ care?” 

Alex’s eyes narrow. It’s been a while since he looked at Michael like this, like he can’t figure out if Michael’s a threat or not. “Of course I don’t care. Whatever they are . . . it’s nobody’s business but their own.”

“Yeah, ‘course you think that.”

“Why are you mad at me right now?”

“ _ I don’t know _ !” Michael spins away to face the desert. 

But he does know. He just doesn’t want to think about it. 

He’s mad because the loud parts of him are deafening right now, when a couple minutes ago they were so quiet he almost forgot they were there. 

He’s mad because everything he thinks about Alex has changed in the last couple months, ‘til most days he feels like he’s walking around upside down, and he’s still worried it hasn’t changed enough. 

And the most selfish part of him is mad because Alex--

Because  _ nothing  _ has changed for Alex, as far as Michael can tell. Including the way Alex looks at Michael. And the fact that Alex still doesn’t want to do a damn thing about it.

Michael sighs and turns to look back over his shoulder at where Alex is still crouched down in Michael’s truck. 

“People could say the same stuff about you and me, y’know? That they say about Rosa and Isobel.”

Alex fidgets with the bracelet around his wrist, but Michael keeps going. “We sneak off together. We spend hours all alone with no one else around. We talk and we sing to each other and, yeah, I see how you blush when I’m close to you. And I’m  _ always _ tryin’ to get close to you.” 

Michael dares to take a step closer. He reaches up and rests his hands on the top of the tailgate. “So what’s that say about us, Alex? Are  _ we  _ together?”

“Michael.” Alex cuts himself off. When he starts again, his voice is even and controlled. “I like you. You’re the smartest guy I’ve ever met, so I know you know that. But you’re-- you’re popular and people like you. Your dad _ loves _ you. And I don’t think you know what this town is like--”

That’s all Michael needs to hear. He steps back from the truck, wiping a hand under his nose. “Well, good thing you’re gettin’ outta here soon then, huh? School year’s almost over; there’s nothin’ else holding you back.”

Michael doesn’t need to say the other part that they both know-- that the UNM envelop in Michael’s drawer has only ever been for distance-learnning classes, ‘cause Michael is  _ never  _ leaving Roswell. Alex thinks it’s because Michael’s life here is so perfect. Michael knows it’s because he can’t afford to turn his back on Alex’s family, meaning the only way he’s getting out is on a spaceship. Either way, it comes down to the same thing.

There’s no future for them.

“You should drive me back,” Alex says quietly. He doesn’t say ‘home.’ 

Michael nods, and does. 

They don’t talk on the ride to town, but it’s so loud in the truck that Michael flips on the radio. 

Neither of them know the words that the voice coming through the speakers is singing, but they know heartbreak when they hear it.

  
  


#

  
  


Michael’s night goes from bad to worse when he gets back to the trailer to find Max waiting for him, pacing like a hunted dog. 

Isobel’s missing. Max left her at prom to chase after-- three guesses-- Liz Ortecho, and by the time he came back, there was no sign of her. Michael’s ready to tear Max a new one, but he remembers at the last second that  _ he  _ also left Isobel tonight to chase after someone he just can’t keep away from.

They try the Crashdown first, and only start really panicking when they see Rosa on duty but no sign of Isobel. They head back to the trailer after that, and the two of them plus Sanders divide up all the spots they can think of that Isobel might go alone. By mid-morning, they’ve exhausted their lists, and Max’s twin-sense is goin’ wild. They finally find her wandering a stretch of desert miles outside of town, with tears smudged on her skin and rips up and down the dress she went on a juice cleanse to make sure she’d fit into. There’s a nasty gash on her right arm, too. When Max reaches out to cover it with his hand, they finally learn what else besides destruction his powers are good for.

They take her back to the trailer, so the Evanses won’t see her like this. Max gets her settled in Michael’s bed with a clean set of Michael’s sweats, and Michael gives them some privacy. A couple minutes pass before he hears the trailer’s front door open, then feels Max sit down beside him on the gravel pad out front.

“She resting okay?”

“I set her up with your ipod. All the T. Swift she could want.”

Michael nods. “Was she--”

“The same.” 

They’re both still wearing parts of their prom tuxedos-- dirt-streaked and reeking now. That’s another lost deposit that Isobel will end up paying, ‘cause the Sanders can’t afford to.

Max drags the toe of his own scuffed-up rental shoe in the dirt. “She keeps saying she could hear them-- our people. That they were out there, in the desert. In prison cells. She’s never said anything like that before.” 

He turns to face Michael head-on. “Do you think that’s possible?”

Michael wishes he knew. Almost as much as he never wants to know. 

He lets out a long, shaky exhale. “My dad always said that the Maneses took some of the aliens alive, after the crash. And then again at the Long Farm.”

He trails off, not able to say the other part of it out loud just yet. That it wasn’t just  _ some aliens _ , who got taken alive. 

It was Michael’s mom.  _ Nora _ . Sanders told them that the Maneses took Nora alive, the night they burned the Long Farm. 

Michael had always assumed that meant interrogation. Torture. A clean execution at the end, if she was lucky. But if Isobel is hearing psychic shouts from alien prisoners out in the desert seventy years later . . . 

Max is obviously thinking the same thing Michael is. But even though he’s supposed to be the writer, he can’t get his imagination around the possibility.

“But we’re talking about things that happened seventy years ago! What are the odds that a fully grown adult who got taken prisoner in 1947 would still be alive today? Let alone a whole prison full of them? It’s impossible.”

“ _ Is  _ it impossible?” Michael lifts one arm, then lets it drop. “Do you know how long our kind lives, Max? ‘Cause I don’t. I don’t know anything about what we are. And the only people that  _ do  _ know found out by taking a bunch of refugees prisoner and then playing alien autopsy with ‘em. And now Isobel says they may have been doing it for seventy years?!”

He trails off, slamming his knuckles into aluminum siding, not letting himself think about Alex staring at his own bruised knuckles like they weren’t really a part of him.

When he pulls his hand back, Max is watching him with that old-man look of his.

“That’s not going to help, and you know it.”

“You got any better suggestions?”

Max sighs and lets his head drop forward. “No. I wish I did. All I know is that  _ whatever  _ it is Isobel’s sensing out there . . . she’s getting worse. It was one thing when she’d just sneak off somewhere with Rosa, but now with these other voices? She got hurt today. She could get  _ really  _ hurt. And no matter how hard you and I try, we can’t be with her 24/7.”

Michael’s not sure how hard he and Max really tried last night. But then he’s not sure how hard they’ll ever be able to try, if Alex or Liz beckons. Maybe this is just how their species works-- another of the things that Tripp and Harlan Manes and their offspring have stopped them from learning about themselves. Maybe their kind falls hard and mates for life, even when their mate ain’t interested.

Or maybe he and Max are just as stupid as any humans.

“Then what, Max? We just sit back and think big thoughts? You finally learn Russian and write a depressing novel about our tormented sister wandering the desert at night trying to find a prison full of ghosts?”

Max lets Michael take his red-hot frustration out on Max, calmly inclining his head when Michael’s done. “Are you finished? Because if you are maybe we could start brainstorming about what we  _ can  _ do.”

Michael drops back down to the stoop, beside Max. “We need information,” he admits.

“I don’t disagree. But where do we get it?”

Michael looks over at his truck. Even after last night’s fight, he’s almost expecting to see Alex sitting in the back with a guitar in his hands and a shy smile stretching the smooth skin below his nose ring. 

The Manes Family’s most vulnerable point.

It’s dumb for Michael’s stomach to fold over on itself like it does at the thought. This was always where the thing with him and Alex was headed, after all. This was the whole point. He just-- forgot that, the last few days. 

He can’t afford to forget anymore.

Michael stands up and starts reaching into his pocket for his keys. 

“Gimme a couple hours,” he tells Max, as he walks toward his truck. “I think I know where to start.”

Max’s voice rings out just as Michael grabs the door handle.

“Are you  _ really  _ sure you that’s where you want to go looking?”

Michael stops. He closes the door to his truck-- without even slamming it. And turns around.

“Where exactly do you think I’m goin,’ Max?” 

Michael knows the answer he’ll get from the look on Max’s face. And sure enough--

“Alex Manes.” 

Michael will give Max credit for this: he looks Michael square in the eyes when he says it. And he doesn’t back down, even when Michael’s jaw clenches. 

“I know you and Isobel think I’m oblivious to everything, but I can tell something’s been going on between you and him. I knew it way before you chased after him last night. To be honest, I wondered about it back when Isobel first told you about his crush-- that stupid joke about using him to get your revenge on his father? I just didn’t think you’d actually take advantage of his feelings like that for real.”

Max’s words are too close to what the chaos inside of Michael has been screaming at him these past weeks. It makes Michael cross his arms tight over his chest.

“Well, gee. I’m sorry that the crap I did to  _ protect  _ us is so distasteful to the high-and-mighty Max Evans. I guess we can’t all be real romantics like you, waiting for our one true love and nothin’ else. And since when do you care so much about Alex Manes anyway? Do you not remember what his family did to us?”

Max’s laugh is incredulous. “Alex is a  _ kid _ , Michael! We’re all just kids. He had nothing to do with what happened in ‘47. He’s not destined to become his family.” 

“Yeah, but what if he  _ is _ ?” 

There’s no point in hoping that Max missed the way Michael’s voice tears on the last word. Max can sense heartache from a mile off, and somehow Michael-- the guy who set out to break  _ Alex’s  _ heart-- feels like he’s stitched together these days out of nothing but.

“I don’t believe that.” Max’s voice is gentle, which Michael hates, except he kinda doesn’t. “I  _ can’t  _ believe that. Hell, you said it yourself, Michael-- we have no idea what we come from. I have to think we get to make our own choices in this world, and that we’re not doomed to repeat other people’s mistakes.”

Max shifts on the stoop, glancing down at his feet and then back up at Michael with a sheepish look on his face. “And anyway, it’s not  _ Alex  _ I’m actually worried about.”

Michael doesn’t think Max’d appreciate hearing that it’s too late to be worried about Michael at this point, so he just shakes his head instead. “I’ve been secret-fake-dating Alex for like two months now. I think I can live with spending one more day in his company.” 

Michael would pretty much live  _ for  _ it, actually. But Max doesn’t need to know that, either.

“Yeah. But could you live with him never forgiving you, if he finds out you’re using him to get to his family?”

Michael’s heart lurches. “It’s not like that between Alex and me,” he lies.

“Right, of course it’s not. You know, I’d almost believe you if I didn’t own a mirror.”

“More poetry from Max Evans. That supposed to mean something?”

Max sighs, again, and rises to his feet. “It  _ means  _ that the way you look at him? The way he looks at you? They’re  _ both _ the way I look at Liz. Whatever you thought you were doing.” 

Max claps Michael on the shoulder while Michael just stands there, mouth open. 

“Just . . . sleep on it, okay? Don’t do something that’ll make you unhappy.”

  
  


#

  
  


Michael does sleep on it. He actually sleeps on it for about twelve hours, until the sun’s high in the sky the next day, ‘cause his dad turns off his alarm-- even though Sanders himself opens the garage at the crack of dawn like usual, like he didn’t lose just as much sleep as Michael did on prom night.

Michael sleeps on it, and when he finally wakes up, he puts on the soft hoodie that Alex borrowed one time when night rolled in while they were too busy playing to notice and Alex’s tissue-thin Panic! At the Disco tee shirt stopped cutting it. He looks at himself in the mirror, focuses on roughin’ up his curls so he doesn’t have to meet his own eyes, then nods grimly and proceeds to the UFO museum.

He should probably be able to calculate how badly this last leg of the plan is going to get away from him, just from the fact that Alex in a stupid holographic employee visor still makes his knees weak. 

Alex’s bored expression goes surprised then skeptical when Michael shuffles his way to the ticket window. “Sanders.”

Michael nods and drums his fingers on the aluminum ledge, the show of nervous energy only half pretend. “Could we talk?” he asks. “Somewhere . . . private?”

The begging note in his voice is also only half pretend.

There’s no give in the hard expression in Alex’s black-lined eyes. Acid and panic both rise in the back of Michael’s throat at the thought that maybe he’s too late, and all his preparation is going to come to nothing. He couldn’t say if the burning he feels at the thought is coming from the pretend part of him or the real part of him, either. It clogs his throat either way. 

But then Alex-- Alex who works his ass off at finding ways to trust a world full of people that always let him down-- relents, and Michael can breathe again. He meets Alex inside the glass doors and follows him in silence through cheap glow-in-the-dark hallways. He spends the walk biting at his thumbnail and tryin’ one last time to get his game plan in order, so that when Alex pushes through a set of seedy red curtains and leads him to stand under plastic UFOs and fluorescent stars, Michael is ready.

As he’ll ever be.

Alex takes off the visor and crosses his arms. “Okay, then. Talk.”

Michael nods, ‘cause this is what he planned for. He’s not a fugitive alien trying to get Baby Manes to let him inside Jesse Manes’ inner sanctum. He’s an almost-boyfriend who screwed up, who just wants Alex to take him home. 

He knows his lines. But the green lighting in this room does nothing to make Alex’s face less distracting. Or to hide the fact that, pissed off as Alex is, he still can’t stop himself from staring at Michael’s mouth. 

So when Michael opens his mouth to start his monologue, and finds that nothing’s comin’ out, he does what he should have done a week ago, and throws himself onto those chapped pink lips that Alex licks between verses and chews when he’s nervous.

Michael’s kissed people before, but no one would know it from the way he holds too tight onto Alex’s neck and presses in too close for either of them to breathe. After a moment, Alex’s eyelashes flutter, and his lips press back softly into Michael’s, before he inches away. They peel away from each other slowly, coming unstuck with a soft pop. 

Michael doesn’t open his eyes after. It makes it easier to pretend he really is doing this back when he should have, out in the desert. Back when it wouldn’t even have been a lie.

“I know you’re leavin’ and I’m stayin,’ but I like you, Alex. All I want from you is this, for as long as we’ve got.”

Michael does open his eyes then, blinking as he adjusts to the overhead lights that weren’t there in his imagination. He only has a second to try, before Alex does what Michael has been wishing he’d do for months, for a whole tangled mess of good and bad reasons. 

It’s Alex’s hands that go around Michael’s neck this time, and Alex’s lips that push urgent and hungry and still so innocent at Michael’s. And Michael can’t help but get carried away by it.

The last thing Michael has time to think, before he’s back in the desert, flying high enough to wave at the real flying saucers, is how he told himself the whole ride to the museum that he was doing this because Isobel’s life depends on it.

But he was wrong. Again. ‘Cause this kiss, right here?

_ Michael _ ’s life depends on this. 

  
  


#

  
  


Michael manages to hang onto enough presence of mind to tell Alex to take him back to Alex’s house, when the hands that started out running sweetly over each other’s backs get closer and closer to groping. He wonders if he finally did figure out how to tap into Isobel’s power after all, with how quickly mule-stubborn Alex starts nodding. But he doesn’t remember seeing any pupils go wide and galaxy-black like Alex’s are right now when Isobel uses her powers. So this must just be the power that comes with kissing someone into another solar system.

“Your dad’s not home, right?” Michael breathes against Alex’s mouth.

Alex barely lets him gets the words out before kissing him again. “Right, not,” he answers, around and in between open-mouthed presses. “He won’t-- for hours.”

“Perfect.”

  
  
  


#

  
  


Alex takes them to the infamous toolshed, which is good enough for Michael’s purposes. He just needs to wait until Alex falls asleep, after-- which is what all guys do, isn’t it? After that, he’ll have free reign over as many of Jesse Manes’ secrets as a telekinetic genius with a lockpick inside his brain can uncover. Which Michael’s thinkin’ is a lot of them.

The only thing standing between now and then is the little matter of telling Alex something with his body that he’s already actively making plans in his mind to betray.

Alex takes off his shirt, giggling as his cuff gets stuck in the blocky sleeve of his UFO emporium tee. He’s as light right now as Michael has ever seen him, expecting all good things that Michael is aiming to destroy. He puts his hand on Michael’s bare shoulder for balance, his fingers curling so careful over Michael’s skin.

Jesse has an office, probably. A desk. Something with drawers. A computer, definitely. There’ll be passwords and encryption. Hidden panels, that kinda thing. But nothing that will give Michael any trouble. Michael is the superior being here.

There’s no human who’s a match for him.

Michael keeps on thinking that, right up until Alex Manes loses his virginity to Michael. 

And then Michael promptly loses everything he’s ever had to Alex.

  
  


#

  
  


Michael keeps telling himself after that he’ll get up any minute, and go do what he came for. But then Alex will look up at him with eyeliner smudges all over his cheekbones, and duck his head when Michael can't help but place little pecks over the stains. His nose settles bony but sweet into the side of Michael’s neck and he inhales. Deep.

It goes on like that for a while. Michael’s just managed to get himself upright on the edge of Alex’s futon, ready to make some kind of excuse about going into the house to use the bathroom, when the door to the shed swings open.

And then, suddenly, Michael doesn’t need a pretext anymore to find out what secrets Jesse Manes is keeping from public view. Because he’s  _ there _ . The big war hero. With his hand around the neck of a skinny seventeen-year-old boy.

Michael’s noisy genius brain is yelling at him that his best-case scenario is to make his escape right the hell now, and sneak into the house. Get in and get out with whatever he can find and do it quickly, while Jesse’s busy giving his brave, bull-headed son another reason to just give in sometimes when someone decides they want to hit him.

Middle-case scenario is for Michael to make his escape and forget about scoping out the house. Make it back to his dad and Max and Isobel in one piece and figure out what to do about Isobel’s episodes later, when there’s not an armed alien hunter breathing down his neck.

Worst-case scenario is press himself against the wall and hope Jesse forgets he’s here. Sit there and listen to Alex go from shouting back to whimpering, and know that it’s worth it to get out of here with his neon-green skin intact.

There’s  _ no  _ scenario that involves Michael intervening. Not when Michael can’t use the parts of himself that could send every nail in the old coffee canister on the far shelf sailing through Jesse with a thought-- not without ending up on some other Manes’ dissection table. No part of  _ Michael  _ could possibly be dumb enough, human enough, to pick that kind of fight.

  
  


#

  
  


Just before the hammer comes down, there’s one moment where Michael is looking at Jesse’s dead eyes and contorted face, and the irony almost bowls him over.

Who would’ve guessed? That between the man obsessed with his family’s legacy and the kid hellbent on destroying it even at the cost of Alex’s heart--

_ Michael _ ’s the one who would sacrifice anything to protect a Manes Man.

  
  


#

  
  


When Michael finally makes his way back to the trailer that night, it’s like the worst kind of deja vu. 

Max is waiting for him, again. This time, Sanders and Isobel are, too. They’re all sitting around the rickety kitchen table like ghosts.

When they see the state that Michael’s in, their eyes go wide, but no one looks like Michael is the worst thing they’ve seen all night. Which-- considering Michael is pale and clammy with snot running down his face and vomit on his shirt from where he had to pull over and throw up on the ride home because the pain is too bad-- says something about what Michael has missed, while he was busy throwing himself into his enemy’s hands.

Michael gets the story while his dad does his best to clean and splint Michael’s throbbing hand. Dad has made himself get good at first aid over the years, since they’ve always known that doctors aren’t an option for Michael. And Michael has made himself get good at only crying a little during the patch-up, because him cryin’ makes it harder for Sanders to pretend like he’s pissed at Michael for making a mess of things, and not holding back tears himself.

It’s Isobel’s story, really, but Max tells most of it. How the voices kept getting louder and louder all day until Isobel blacked out and decided she needed to save them. How, in the time it took Max to run into the Crashdown and pick up their dinner, Isobel managed to slide out of the passenger side of his jeep, and steal Rosa’s car with Rosa in it. About goin’ seventy miles over the speed limit, and runnin’ two other girls from their school clear off the road. About how Max had called Michael as soon as he came back to an empty jeep, then called Sanders when the line just rang and rang. 

Max and Sanders had arrived at a mile marker too high to bother counting to find two twisted metal heaps, two girls half dead, Isobel catatonic, and Rosa pacing and crying and yelling with blood pouring down from a cut on her forehead. 

“She saw everything.” Max tells Michael, like he’s trying to justify something. “She saw what I-- how I tried to heal the other two girls. And she heard everything Isobel had been saying, about the prisons in the desert, and the aliens. She knows too much. She was hysterical and she was threatening to tell everyone!”

Michael’s blood goes cold. “What did you do.”

Max looks down at the table and goes quiet.

“Rosa’s leaving town, son. Tonight.” Sanders closes up the kit and rests a hand on Michael’s shoulder, right where Alex’s messy hair had been resting just a couple hours ago. “In a little while, she’s gonna wake up and decide she needs to get away from Roswell, head out for the coast. In a few days she won’t remember why she left-- just that it was her choice. And the right one.”

Michael takes it all in. 

It’s unfair, what they’re doing to Rosa-- or what Isobel’s already done, with that power that Michael used to covet. It’s an invasion of Rosa’s mind and choices. It’s making her pay for something that never had anything to do with her, that she got dragged into without any say.

It will also keep them all safe.

Michael nods. “What do you need me to do?”

“I towed the car,” Sanders answers. “There were no witnesses to the crash. But she can’t drive it down the road like it is, let alone to California.” 

Sanders raises the eyebrow not covered by his patch and waits for Michael to put the pieces together.

It doesn’t take long. Michael’s a genius, after all. 

They go out to a dark corner of the lot, where the lone security camera doesn’t reach, and Dad pulls a tarp away to reveal a pile of red metal. The front of the car is crushed up like a tin can, but the back-- where Rosa’s lying unconscious on the upholstery, no sign of a cut anywhere-- is fine.

It takes Michael almost an hour to untwist and unflatten all the pieces, his hand killing him the whole time, but when he’s done the car’s good as new. 

The four of them-- three aliens and Michael’s dad-- all stand together, looking at Michael’s handiwork for a long time after he’s done.

“I’ll make sure she leaves a note for her dad.”

It takes Michael a second to recognize the small voice, devoid as it is of that trademark Isobel Evans confidence.

“I’ll make sure she leaves one for Liz, too.” Isobel looks over at Max, guilty. “So they don’t worry.”

Max drops his head at Isobel’s offer, one hand coming up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, looking for relief from a pain that’s not actually coming from where he’s pretending it is.

Max doesn’t notice the look that Isobel and Michael exchange over his head. The one that says that Max is never going to be able to keep their secret when the most tenacious person in this town-- other than the one that Michael left crying softly in the corner of a run-down shed-- starts up a heartbroken quest for answers about where her big sister ran off to.

Michael sighs.

Rosa’s not the only Ortecho that’s going to have to leave Roswell for good, and soon.

Isobel just nods.

Michael wants to feel worse about the decision he and Isobel are silently making than he does. It wasn’t even 24 hours ago that he and Max stood in this same lot and Max tried to give Michael his blessing to  _ not  _ put their family first, if it meant losing someone who matters. In a fair world, Michael would be able to return the favor.

But.

There are E.R. doctors tonight trying to figure out how two girls made miraculous recoveries from a crash that should have left them dead. There’s another girl who’s one busted mind wipe away from remembering she knows every one of Michael, Max, and Isobel’s secrets. There may be a prison somewhere out in the desert that specializes in holding their kind. And Alex--

Alex is crying himself to sleep right now, because the guy who either fights back or suffers in silence when  _ he  _ gets attacked, can’t bear to watch  _ Michael  _ bleed. And he’s doing it all alone, ‘cause Michael can’t trust himself not to expose himself  _ and  _ Max  _ and  _ Isobel if he goes back to that shed and sees one more bruise on Alex’s perfect body than was already there waiting for Michael when Alex let Michael see everything hiding beneath his black clothes this afternoon.

Max had told Michael yesterday that they’re all just kids, but that’s not true. Not anymore. The world is closing in on them and they have to grow up and be  _ smart  _ now. That’s the only advantage they have in this war that started seventy years ago without their permission: that they’re smarter than these humans. That they  _ can  _ be.

Liz makes Max stupid, so she has to go. 

The people who make them stupid-- 

They all have to go.

  
  


#

  
  


In the end, it doesn’t take much to get Alex to leave Michael-- just like Michael always suspected. Certainly doesn’t take the psychic crowbar that Isobel needs to pry Liz away from Max’s side.

It’s little things, mostly. Stuff Michael says while they lie in his truck in their spot in the desert. He tells Alex that his UNM plans are off, which isn’t a lie; there’s a garage with Michael’s name on it, after all, and Michael’s not feelin’ all that keen these days on sinking time and money into the agricultural engineering degree that he used to dream about with Alex, anyway. 

His mom helped humans make things grow once. And look how she ended up.

They fight about Michael’s future once or twice, about his refusal to take his busted-up hand to a doctor a lot more times than that. But as the weeks go by, Michael sees less of angry Alex and more of resigned Alex. The earnest promises about phone calls and texting and Michael coming to visit when Alex leaves town dry up, too, sometime around when Michael gives Alex his brother’s guitar back.

Not like Michael can use it anymore anyhow.

Michael likes to think it’s his newly acquired taste for brawling that really does the trick. It’s a smart strategy, considering how much Alex hates violence-- even if Michael’s not a huge fan of it, either.

But if Michael’s really honest with himself, he knows it’s not the fighting, or the missed dates, or the mood swings, or the constant reminders about what Alex’s dad did that pushes Alex away.

The real trick is that there is no trick. Alex leaves Michael ‘cause he’s never really wanted to stay.

Michael tells himself that the knowledge doesn’t ache just as bad as his hand does, and mostly he can believe it. Alex never lied about his intentions, after all-- which is a whole lot more than Michael can say.

In fact, there’s really only one lie that Alex tells Michael in all the time they spend together. And it’s one Michael never should have believed in the first place.

The day Alex ships out, a soldier in his father’s war after all, Michael spends his first and only night in jail. It’s a win-win, really. Jackass Valenti gets his hubcaps stolen, and Michael gets to never see MANES stitched over Alex’s heart, like a reminder of everything Michael knew from the start and let himself forget. 

The chewing out his dad gives him on the ride back from the station is so worth it. 

It’s the gentle, “aw, kid,” that’s harder to take, when they drive past the spot on the highway where Alex got stranded once, and Michael finally drops his head into his broken hand and sobs.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading-- and for all of your immensely kind feedback! 
> 
> UP NEXT: There's a ten-year hole in the middle of this story, but it's not empty. A brief entr'acte.


	4. Entr'acte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s the way Max goes full-body rigid, more than Isobel’s words, that makes Michael’s entropy start shifting._
> 
> _“What’s keepin’ Jesse Manes so busy these days?” Michael makes sure to keep his voice careless and drawling, even though he can feel his leg want to start bouncing under the table. “They discover some new species that no one’s tried to genocide yet?”_
> 
> _“You haven’t heard the news?” ___
> 
> _  
>   
> _
> 
> _  
> _A brief interlude from the missing decade._  
> _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone. Today's chapter is a brief peek into the ten-year hole in the middle of Michael and Alex's story; I'm sorry for another sad one. Please be aware that there are non-graphic mentions of violence, military service injury (since the show canon hasn't seen fit to say exactly how Alex was injured I've suggested one possibility), and loss of limb in this chapter. Also, please bear in mind that Michael (in this AU as in canon) says things that hurt when he's hurting; it's frankly not a trait of his that I have much patience for, but I'm feeling more tender toward him these days, at least in this AU, because I promise he's on a journey worth taking. 
> 
> We'll be back with another full-length installment this weekend, starting with a high-school reunion that's a reunion in more ways than one (!).

**Entr'acte, 2017**

“Okay, I only have five minutes before Table 5’s inner WASP decides they want to smother that breakfast burrito in ketchup, and they figure out that no one has refilled the bottles since Tuesday, so let’s make this quick. Also-- order up.” 

Isobel slides a bright green monstrosity across the shiny table top toward Max, before plopping down on the bench beside Michael, the antennas on her headband bobbing.

Iz got a job at the Crashdown right around the time that Arturo found himself runnin’ the place alone, after both of his daughters cleared out of Roswell within weeks of each other. It started out as a part-time thing while she was taking online classes in brand management or whatever it is she does. These days, she’s technically the Crashdown’s social media consultant-- like she is for just about every business in town-- but she still picks up shifts where she can. She says she thinks it makes Arturo feel like one of his girls is still around. Michael thinks it makes  _ her  _ feel like they didn’t condemn the nicest guy in Chaves County to an empty apartment over the diner he bought to leave for his daughters. But they’re all coping with the things they did their senior year in different ways.

Speaking of.

Michael tips his head toward the milkshake in front of Max, sitting next to their two black coffees and Michael’s huevos rancheros. 

“Little early in the day for one of those.”

Max’s face goes guilty all over, but he pulls the glass in closer-- like someone’s gonna take it away otherwise. “Big talk from the guy who got a lifetime ban from the Pony.”

Michael rolls his eyes, ‘cause they both know the reasons that none of them go back to the Wild Pony, and it’s not because of the thirteenth or fourteenth time that Deluca threatened to ban Michael back when they were 23, before Sanders laid down the law on how long a bender Michael was allowed to go on to cope with the things  _ he _ had broken in the spring of 2008. For Isobel, it’s the time she tried to push happy thoughts into Deluca’s head to make up for forgetting to have Rosa leave a note for her best friend before leaving town forever, and pulled back wide-eyed and disoriented, saying something around Maria didn’t feel right. For Max, it’s the picture of Maria sandwiched between two dark-eyed sisters with bright smiles that sits proudly over the register. 

For Michael, it’s the weary look that Maria wears more often than not since high school, which his brain knows is probably about her mom or her business or an asshole customer, but that makes his heart clench every time, wonderin’ if it’s because she’s heard bad news from overseas. 

“Ugh. Sibling banter later; exposition now. I’m on the clock, people.”

Isobel taps her nail against her shiny apple watch, and Michael pushes bad memories aside. He’s gotten real good at it. Doesn’t even need a beer first, anymore, or acetone. Or some good-looking guy or girl who knows how to have fun but still can’t seem to make Michael see spaceships, like he only ever has when he was fumbling around without hardly knowing where all the parts go, just so happy to be with a boy he loved and was using.

Max leans across the table, lowering his voice. “It’s about Jim Valenti.”

Isobel rolls her eyes so hard she winds up pushing herself back from the table and collapsing against the booth’s red pleather. “The Valenti thing again, Max? Really?”

Michael’s eye roll is smaller, but in full agreement. “You realize the garage is supposed to open by eight, right? Unless there’s an  _ actual  _ emergency to back up your emergency meeting request?”

“I know you guys don’t think there’s anything to it--”

“The man died of cancer, Max. Almost three years ago. It’s tragic, but not exactly . . .“ Isobel raises an eyebrow and gestures at the silver ball on the end of one antenna instead of finishing the sentence.

Jim Valenti had been Max’s first-- and only-- lead on answering the questions that have been haunting them since Isobel started raving about secret alien lock-up a decade ago, only for the cries in her head-- along with the terrifying blackouts and also all their clues-- to dry up a few weeks after they sent away Rosa Ortecho. It probably goes to show what kind of a detective Max is-- not that it’s all that surprising for a guy who wanted to write pretentious novels and only ended up on the force ‘cause it was as good a place as any to dig around for things that no one wants them to find.

At first, Michael had thought there could be something to the Valenti idea. Jim had been joined at the hip with his old hunting buddy Jesse Manes, despite not seeming to like the guy all that much-- not that Michael could blame him for that. And the strange times that, according to Max’s spying, Jim would go AWOL during a shift and come back with the cruiser’s odometer wiped were consistent with suspicious activity-- or with growing the army of illegitimate kids that rumor says the man left behind all over town. But then Jim died in his fifties, and even Michael can’t find a way to pin an aggressive brain tumor on the cancer that is the Manes-- that is Jesse Manes. 

The cold trail hasn’t stopped Max, though.

“I know,” he tells Isobel. “But the Sheriff put me on desk duty again last night, and I was going through the public records requests. There was one for all reports on Jim’s whereabouts from October tenth through the seventeenth, 2014. That’s the week before he got diagnosed.”

“Could just be a coincidence.” Michael pushes the eggs around his plate. “People have all kinds of good reasons for wanting to know what the police department is up to that have nothing to do with the sheriff’s health problems.”

“Yeah. But the request was from  _ Kyle  _ Valenti.” Max pauses to let the information sink in. “If Kyle wants to know what Jim was doing before he got sick, then maybe he also has suspicions about what really happened.”

“Or maybe he’s just a grieving son tryin’ to accept the things he cannot change.”

“Maybe. But what if he knows something we don’t? Something that’s making him ask questions three years later?”

Michael turns reluctantly to Isobel, who gives him an equally reluctant shrug.

“I hate to say it, but this is closer to a lead than most of his theories.”

Max gives a fist pump that Michael chooses to ignore in favor of a sigh. “So what do we do, Officer Evans? Interrogate Valenti Junior?”

Isobel’s eyes light up. “Would there be handcuffs involved? Because if so, I volunteer as tribute.”

“Seriously, Iz? Jackass Valenti? Strutting around in that dumb letterman jacket lookin’ for easy targets?”

Not that Valenti had been much good at actually knowing who was an easy target, and who was tougher than Valenti could ever hope to be. 

Isobel folds her hand into a fist and perches her chin on top of it, fluttering her eyelashes. “Haven’t you heard? He’s reformed. He’s 100% compassionate doctor now. I heard there was meditation involved. And hopefully yoga.”

Michael doubts there’s an amount of meditation or breathing exercises or prayer or anything else that can make up for having had a certain someone’s trust and then hurting him with it. And Michael would know.

To Isobel he just quirks an eyebrow. “I’m guessin’ things didn’t work out with you and Janine from Planet 7, then?”

“Janine from Planet 7 and I have irreconcilable differences regarding the judicious use of zipties.”

Michael tips his mug to her. “Tale as old as time.”

Nothing on this planet is quite as green as a Little Green Man shake, but across the table, Max is getting pretty close to matching his. 

“On  _ that  _ note, I’m gonna take another look at Kyle’s request today, see if he sent any other emails. Once I’ve done that we can think about reaching out. Without--” he mumbles the last bit into his coffee “-- zipties.” 

“Congratulations, buddy. You almost managed not to blush that time. By the time you’re thirty, you’ll be talkin’ about sex in full sentences.”

Max rolls his eyes at Michael, and then again at Isobel’s golf clap. 

“Seriously, though,” Isobel says, stealing a swig of Max’s coffee. “If we’re going to look into this Kyle Valenti thing we should do it soon. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but if we’re going to be digging through Jesse Manes’ dirty laundry, it would be safer to do it while he has . . . other concerns occupying his time.”

It’s the way Max goes full-body rigid, more than Isobel’s words, that makes Michael’s entropy start shifting.

“What’s keepin’ Jesse Manes so busy these days?” Michael makes sure to keep his voice careless and drawling, even though he can feel his leg want to start bouncing under the table. “They discover some new species that no one’s tried to genocide yet?” 

“You haven’t heard the news?”

“Isobel.” Max’s voice sounds like a warning, but Iz ignores him.

“Everyone’s been talking about it around the base; I thought maybe some of the guys had been by the garage and mentioned it.”

“Mentioned what?”

“ _ Isobel. _ ” Max tries again, but Michael’s insides are vibrating now like a plucked string. Like a guitar string.

“Mentioned  _ what _ ?”

Max sighs and Isobel frowns at him, before turning all the way in her seat to face Michael. 

“A group of airmen got hit last weekend outside of Baghdad. An IED or something like that. Alex Manes was one of them.”

The world around Michael goes brilliant bone-white, like an atomic blast. Or a spaceship crash. It only lasts a second. He thinks it only lasts a second. 

When the colors come back they’re oversaturated, and Isobel’s still talking.

“--heard they were flying him to Germany. Ramstein, probably? But they can only do that once he’s fully stabilized.”

Michael hears present tense and nothing else.

“He’s alive?” 

Isobel’s frown is the only clue Michael gets that he might be talking too loud. To him, his voice sounds like it’s buried in earth. He can barely hear it over the screaming inside him.

“Yes, that’s what I just said. It’s been touch and go, apparently, but once they get him stabilized the plan is to fly him to Germany to see what they can do about his leg.”

Michael’s never felt like less of a genius. Almost never felt like less of a genius. He tries to pick up and examine each word as Isobel says it, but he can’t put them into a pattern. They don’t build anything. They’re just pieces. 

“Touch and go-- that’s-- So-- What the hell, Iz? Is he gonna make it, or not?”

Michael’s throat feels strained by the last word. Isobel’s wide eyes dart around to the booths on either side of them like she’s worried other people might hear them. Michael doesn’t see how they could. When he still can’t even hear himself.

“I don’t really know. I don’t have any more details than that.” Isobel drops her voice even lower, her eyes still on everyone else who’s supposed to be enjoying an instagram-worthy breakfast at hashtag-CrashdownRNM. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d care this much.”

On the other side of the table, Max pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales like it hurts him. Like it hurts  _ him _ . 

It’s suddenly all Michael can do not to grab that stupid grief-milkshake and throw it in Max’s face, so Michael doesn’t have to look at Max’s cheap empathy routine anymore. He’s suffered through being declared a charter member of Max’s two-man Secret Alien Heartbreak Club (although Michael’s heartbreak is the only one that’s actually a secret from the other people in their life), without ever asking for an invite. He’s lived with the Concerned Looks everytime Alex came back to Roswell between deployments these past nine years and never once swung by the garage. He’s done his best to ignore the Pitying Looks the few times he manages to talk about the Manes Men in front of Max and Isobel with his old vitriol, without sayin’ the words like there’s an asterisk next to them. He’s even dealt with the trademark Evans Constipation Face whenever Michael goes home with someone new instead of cryin’ in a corner sipping a milkshake he doesn’t even like out of loyalty to a memory. 

But  _ this _ ?

Michael wants to grab him by his uniform collar and yell,  _ what the hell do you know about it, Max?  _

What do you know about what Michael’s feeling, when Liz left Roswell to live her dream, playing with beakers in a safe little lab somewhere, and Isobel  _ still  _ had to break into her brain to convince her to do it? Meanwhile Alex decided that following daddy’s orders all the way into a warzone was better than spending one more day with Michael?

What does Max know about hopin’ to God that Alex really did leave ‘cause he never had any intention of staying by Michael’s side? ‘Cause the alternative would mean admitting that all of Michael’s brawling and bitching that summer after graduation could be the reason that Alex decided to go? Admitting that  _ Michael  _ could be the reason that Alex--

“ _ Michael _ .”

Isobel’s whisper is sharp now and it pulls Michael’s attention away from the way his hand is shaking against the table top.

No.

The way the tabletop is shaking under Michael’s hand.

Michael pulls his palm away like it’s burning. The shaking stops.

Isobel is still gawping at him, the ‘what the hell is the matter with you?’ clear on her face.

Michael makes himself slouch back in the booth. Makes himself scoff. “Care? Nah. What do I care about Alex Manes?”

“Well, I would have said ‘not at all,’ but that was before the table started twerking.” Isobel’s expression softens. “I can try to get more information if you want?”

Michael digs his nails into his palms beneath the table-- as many of his fingers as can still bend. “Don’t bother. I’m just tryin’ to figure out if we’ve still got the full set of Manes Men to worry about, or if Uncle Sam took care of one for us.”

Max squeezes his eyes shut at the same time that Isobel smacks Michael’s shoulder. Hard.

“That is a horrible thing to say, Michael.” Then the look on her face goes from appalled to annoyed. “God, you’ve always been so weird about Alex, even when we were in school. I know how you feel about his family-- how we  _ all _ feel about his family-- but Alex never seemed like a mean kid. I always thought he liked you!” 

Michael’s saved from having to say anything by Table 5 choosing that moment to toodle-oo at Isobel and gesture at their empty ketchup bottle. 

“Saved by the WASPs,” she tells him before getting up and marching away with the perky step that Table 5 is going to learn all too soon they should be scared of. 

When she leaves, it’s just Michael, Max, and a Little Green Man in the booth. 

Max is the one to break the silence.

“I only found out yesterday. I was going to tell you. Just-- not like this.”

Michael nods, taking in the words. 

“I was going to wait until we knew more. About his prognosis.”

Michael nods again.

“Okay, can you quit it with the nodding? Look, I know that this is--”

Michael stands all at once, quick enough to make the table rock-- by earthly means, this time. 

“No, Max. You don’t.”

He leans down to grab the black Stetson from where where it’s resting on the bench. He bought it right around Alex’s first deployment. ‘Cause if Alex could admit that he’s a soldier after all, maybe it was time for Michael to stop fighting the dumbass cowboy thing, too.

“Enjoy your milkshake,” he says with the emptiest smile he can muster.

He can hear Max calling his name behind him, but he doesn’t turn around. 

He doesn’t remember getting from the Crashdown to his truck, parked one street down and around the corner. Just remembers putting the key in the ignition and setting off to open the garage.

It’s a surprise when he finds himself parked out in a too-familiar spot in the desert instead. The sky out here is open and beautiful today, like he sees it when he dreams. He wonders if the skies look like that over all of Earth’s deserts. He wonders, if you were lying on your back in a desert far, far away, and you couldn’t move to get up, is this what you would see? 

Would it make you feel any less scared?

He decides to start the engine again. It’s gotta be nearly afternoon, and his dad’ll be all over his ass for missing the morning shift. But his arms feel numb and clumsy, and when he turns the key, his elbow hits the knob for the radio. He finally got around to fixing the damn thing a few years back. He can hear songs with lyrics he recognizes now. 

Sometimes he recognizes them too well. 

The voice on the radio sings about spreading blankets on the beach, and even though the old song’s still just the one voice and the one guitar, it makes the world go the opposite of quiet today. 

Michael’s genius enough to know, when he cuts the engine with trembling hands-- not sure whether the world around him is shaking, or he’s the one shaking it-- that he’s not making it into the garage today. He’s not making it anywhere. Instead, he gives into the storm inside of him, and sits in the cab with his head pressed to the rattling steering wheel, thinkin’ noisy promises to whatever power runs this unhappy planet about how he’ll leave Alex Manes alone for good and never hurt him again if Earth will just make sure that one person who actually belongs on this pile of rock sticks around a little longer.

When Alex comes home to Roswell six months later with half his right leg gone, Michael can’t help but think, even around the rush of aching relief, that that’s partial credit on Earth’s part.

But that’s all right. Because it turns out partial credit is about as much as Michael can manage on his end of the bargain, too. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UP NEXT: Ten years on, a Manes and an Ortecho return to the scene of the crash(down). It's all just a little bit of history repeating . . .


	5. Act Two, part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Liz is dancing with Deluca again, while Max does an embarrassing half-shimmy next to them. The girls are clasping hands and singing into each other’s faces, and Michael can’t stop thinking about how different things would be if it were really 2008 again. How Rosa would have crashed, probably, and caused ten kinds of trouble. And how Liz and Maria’s third musketeer would be right in the thick of it with them, bitching about the how the music doesn’t meet his avant garde standards, and stealing glances that still only half make sense to Michael all these years later._
> 
> _The dial in Michael’s head cranks higher and higher until he can barely tell the crashing drums of whatever band Iz hired from the thoughts that buzz and ricochet through the asteroid belt in his head. He tips his hat over his eyes and lets his boots lead him somewhere he can look for quiet._
> 
> _It’s only when he’s leaning on a fire door next to another of Isobel’s mylar curtains that Michael remembers what his body still thinks of, when it thinks of peace and quiet._
> 
> Ten years on, part one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A decade after high school graduation, Alex Manes is back in Roswell and the Season 1 AU portion of the story begins in earnest. Michael starts out with good intentions, but it doesn't take long for circumstances to intervene and for him to fall back into bad habits. Other things, he never fell out of in the first place . . . 
> 
> For those who care about background pairings, please be aware that there are references in this chapter to a spot of offscreen casual Kybel, as well as to offscreen not-even-remotely casual Echo. 
> 
> Thank you so, so much to everyone who has read along thus far; I'm blown away by your kind and encouraging response. Next chapter should be up Wednesday!

**Act Two, 2018**

Of all the places Michael imagined he’d be ten years after high school graduation, ‘at a reunion celebrating that fact’ was pretty frickin’ low on the list. Higher than anywhere outside Roswell city limits, maybe-- unless he got carted there by Jesse Manes and the guys who experimented on E.T. But definitely lower than listening to the battered radio in the garage, counting down the minutes ‘til he can turn in. Or bumming a beer and watching  _ rebooted _ Battle Bots with his dad. Or tinkering with the scraps of glowing not-really glass that live in the underground bunker on the far edge of the auto yard where Rosa Ortecho’s car got reincarnated once, the trap door hidden beneath a busted-down airstream that everyone but Michael and his dad and siblings think is Michael’s quarter-life passion project instead of a cover for a series of hunches that maybe he’ll figure out one day how to solder into an escape plan.

Michael could be any of those places right now. But instead he’s here, surrounded by shiny, happy humans gettin’ beer-tears nostalgic about an anniversary that coincides with pretty much every terrible thing that’s ever happened to Michael on this planet, except for the things that happened without him even knowing, while he was in a state of suspended extraterrestrial animation. 

And except for the other thing. The one he’s doing his best not to think about, every time he catches a flash of silver crutch weaving through the periphery of the crowd. 

So far Michael’s done an okay job avoiding that flash of silver anywhere and everywhere it could show up around town. It’s not exactly hard-- not on the logistics, anyway. The only places Michael really goes anymore are places that wounded warriors with purple hearts have no call--and no interest-- being: The garage. The bunker. Max’s house on the edge of the desert. Isobel’s gentrification monster of a condo. 

The few common areas where a run-in is conceivable, Michael’s gone ahead and cut out of his rotation, just to be safe: The Crashdown. The Wild Pony. Planet 7-- which Michael makes himself classify as conceivable, ‘cause there’s no reason to think that Captain Manes would object to some Brendon Urie look-alike thanking him for his service, just ‘cause Alex never did make his move on Michael until Michael’s duplicity forced the issue. 

Michael goes ahead and puts that spot out in the desert on the list of places to avoid, too. Not ‘cause it’s actually conceivable that Michael would run into Alex there. But because staying away means that Michael doesn’t have to see with his own eyes that  _ Alex  _ doesn’t go back and roll the windows down and pretend he can still hear guitar chords and a voice not really singing, on the nights when everything feels like it’s too much.

Michael’s only screwed up his promise to leave Alex Manes the hell alone this time once. Just once in the three weeks that Alex has been roaming Roswell, wearing the uniform that Michael still doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to, even though he always expected Alex to wear it some day. 

Almost always. 

Anyway, his big screw-up had been the Crashdown, which he knew was a no-go. But Isobel had wanted to have another emergency breakfast meeting to update Michael and Max on her efforts at casually-incepting-slash-recreationally-sleeping-with Kyle Valenti. Michael had figured an early meeting would be safe enough, without takin’ into account military schedules and the fact that all these years later, Alex still has no interest in cooking anything worth eating. Not exactly a genius move, but even a genius can self-sabotage.

They’d just about collided on the sidewalk outside the diner: Michael leaving just as Alex was coming in. The irony there was rich enough that, when Alex looked Michael up and down, boots to hat, with his new, perfect Jesse Manes posture and not a piercing to be found, Michael couldn’t help himself. He’d pasted on the leering grin that had scared Alex away once before and drawled out a “howdy, Private. Back so soon?”

Alex hadn’t looked scared this time, or angry, or resigned; Michael had wondered if maybe those expressions he’d known were all gone now, like the eyeliner that Michael used to find smudged into his thumbprint after cradling Alex’s face for hours, until his lips were sore. This new Alex with his regulation haircut had gone calculating instead. 

“I thought you weren’t a cowboy,” he said, the dark slash of one eyebrow just barely lifting.

Michael’s answer-- “And I thought you weren’t a solider in Daddy’s war”-- had been too automatic, too low in his gut to attribute to any real strategy. But that didn’t stop Michael, after Alex’s dark eyes shuttered-- that one expression a taste of old times at last-- from congratulating himself on a job well done while Alex, once more, walked away.

So anyway, it’s all been workin’ out just great, keeping distance between Michael and the man Michael’s never gonna screw over again. Until Liz Ortecho comes back to town, and within twenty-four hours, Max has blown up every one of the barriers they’ve built around their secrets, right on cue. 

And now here Michael is celebrating the Class of 2008, watching Liz twirl around the dancefloor with Deluca and wondering if he should be expecting the men in black to show up now or later. And whether Jesse Manes or his youngest protege will be leading them.

“I always thought our ultimate downfall would be taller.” 

Michael turns to where Isobel has sidled up next to his stakeout, all in black. He’s figured for a while that _ his  _ ultimate downfall would be 5’10,” but he knows what Isobel’s actually tryin’ to tell him, so he keeps the detail to himself and exhales instead, tired and loud.

“He told her, then.”

Anyone looking at Isobel right now would think she’s surveying this party she’s thrown for the perfect photo op, instead of waiting for the big, shiny handprint over Ortecho’s heart to peek out from behind her sweater. Her nod is almost too small to see.

“He says she took it well. No screaming, no threats.” Her eyes cut to Michael’s. “Not much in the way of a sisterly resemblance.”

Michael can feel the headache that’s been building all day throb with the memory of the last time an Ortecho sister found out what Max, Michael, and Isobel are. And what the three of them did to keep her quiet.

“He tell her that part, too?”

Isobel meets Michael’s incredulous tone with a knowing look.

Michael sighs. “Of course he didn’t.” 

“ ‘She can never know.’ Apparently.”

Michael would recognize Max’s idea of a plan-- 90% wishful thinking and 0% execution-- in the words, even without Isobel’s John Wayne impression.

Across the room Liz laughs in delight as Deluca raises their joined hands and makes Liz spin underneath them. When she comes to a stop, Max is suddenly standing right in front of her, all middle-school-dance hands and doting eyes-- like someone turned back the clock to 2008 and it actually  _ solved  _ his heartache, instead of dropping him right back in the middle of it.

Michael clenches his jaw.

“He have any bright ideas on how he plans to keep a woman thirty to forty times smarter than him from figuring out he’s hiding the truth about her sister’s disappearance from her? Or are we goin’ with ‘the power of true love’ on that one?”

Michael can tell from the soft cluck Isobel makes that she’ll drag Max to hell and back, but at the end of the day, she’s takin’ his side on this. The way her lower lip juts out while she watches Max dip Liz confirms it.

“In his defense, I don’t think he’s been in planning mode on this one.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Isobel rolls her eyes at  _ Michael  _ that time, and that’s proof enough of where her loyalties lie. “Liz was bleeding out in front of him, Michael. Cut him some slack. Would you not have done the same, for someone you loved since  _ you  _ were seventeen?”

Michael can feel his heart start to hammer-- pun fully intended--at Isobel’s hypothetical question. He resists the urge to knead at where his pulse feels like it’s trapped inside his distended knuckles. 

“Guess there’s no way to know. Considerin’ I’m not the one with the magic hands.” 

Neither the careless drawl nor the asshole smirk that accompanies it throws Isobel off her mark. 

“Ugh, don’t be so pedantic.” She bumps her shoulder against Michael’s, her eyes softening in a way Michael doesn’t like. 

“Is there really no one in this world that you would risk everything to save?”

Michael squirms away from the hand that comes to rest on his arm. The weight of it is too much, on top of the weight of knowing that Max heals the things he loves, and Michael destroys them.

When he meets Isobel’s gaze, he makes sure he’s got both eyebrows raised. “Tell me this isn’t your way of sayin’ you want to spill the beans to Kyle Valenti.”

The distraction works this time.

“What!? Valenti? No! No, I told you.” Her voice goes whisper-quiet as she whips her head from side to side, more worried about who might be listening now than she was when they were talking about their secret alien powers. “That was so totally a one-time thing.”

Michael doesn’t say a word.

“ _ Ugh _ , fine. It was a four-time thing. But it’s not happening anymore!”

Michael grins in spite of himself, because the last time he heard, it was a three-time thing, and that wasn’t even a week ago. 

“I’m serious, Michael!” Isobel pauses to tuck her hair behind her ear-- an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. “High-school jackassery aside, Kyle is actually a pretty good guy. In addition to being surprisingly creative in his choice of safewords.” 

At Michael’s raised eyebrow, she purses her bright red mouth. “Did you know the adult human body has more than 200 bones, each one of them distinctly named?”

Michael lets out a low whistle. “Didn’t think Valenti had it in him.”

“That’s not  _ all _ he had in him. But that-- surprisingly-- is not my point.”   
  


“It’s a point I wouldn’t mind hearin’ more about, though.”

“Rain check; I promise.” 

Isobel’s wicked grin softens into the smile that will always make Michael think of being a little kid lost in a new world, and seeing a small hand reaching toward his own.

“I just meant-- there’s never going to be anything  _ real  _ between me and Kyle. For obvious reasons.”

“His face, voice, and personality?”

Isobel swats Michael’s shoulder. “Because of how it  _ started _ .”

Michael’s stomach drops, but Isobel keeps talking, bright and amused, like it’s a joke that they’re sharing. “God, can you imagine? Our first date was me tying him up and rocking his world as a pretext for rifling around in his deep, dark family secrets. Not exactly a story for the grandkids.”

Michael thinks he manages to move his mouth into something like a smile. “I’ll take your word for it.” 

Isobel squeezes his elbow. “Take another while you’re at it:  _ Unclench _ . Grab a soda. Make bad choices with some alum or alumna that needs to feel like they didn’t peak in high school. This wall will hold itself up. And there’ll be time to sic your alien deathray-vision on Max tomorrow.”

And just like that she’s gone, off to inspect the the thousand yards of mylar streamers she’s draped over every wall in the place, leaving Michael by himself to watch the scene in front of him. 

Liz is dancing with Deluca again, while Max does an embarrassing half-shimmy next to them. The girls are clasping hands and singing into each other’s faces, and Michael can’t stop thinking about how different things would be if it were really 2008 again. How Rosa would have crashed, probably, and caused ten kinds of trouble. And how Liz and Maria’s third musketeer would be right in the thick of it with them, bitching about the how the music doesn’t meet his avant garde standards, and stealing glances that still only half make sense to Michael all these years later.

The dial in Michael’s head cranks higher and higher until he can barely tell the crashing drums of whatever band Iz hired from the thoughts that buzz and ricochet through the asteroid belt in his head. He tips his hat over his eyes and lets his boots lead him somewhere he can look for quiet.

It’s only when he’s leaning on a fire door next to another of Isobel’s mylar curtains that Michael remembers what his body still thinks of, when it thinks of peace and quiet. 

Alex doesn’t see Michael straight away. He’s got his right leg propped up on some old boxes, bent at the waist so he can worry at a prosthetic that Michael’s already thought of a half-dozen ways to improve, just from the times he’s told himself tonight that he wasn’t clocking Alex’s stance and how he carries his weight and the angry lines between his eyebrows. 

Those lines are on full display now. Michael guesses at first it’s from the way the fit of the prosthetic makes Alex tense through his hip, just to maintain his military alignment. But then Michael sees the picture on the projection screen that Alex is watching all by himself in an empty room where the party isn’t, and he realizes that physical pain’s only part of the story.

Michael gets it; he misses the rebel kid on that screen, with the fuck-you eyeliner and the innocent smile, more than just about anything, too. 

Michael’s getting ready to duck out the way he came, stay true to his word like he wasn’t to Alex. But then a soft exhale that sounds like stolen hours in the desert stops him in his tracks.

When he looks back up, the picture on the screen has changed to one he’s sure Isobel donated from her own personal collection: Michael with shorter curls and a baby face, leaning against a familiar rear fender. 

Alex is watching the image as rapt as he ever was. But even bathed in the light from the projector, the new taut lines and old haunted shadows of his face add up to somethin’ that Michael can’t recognize anymore. Michael finds himself trying to learn the new cipher-- taking advantage of going unobserved.

Or so he thinks. Until Alex’s voice cuts through the noise of the crowd on the other side of the door.

“You still drive that old truck.” 

Alex doesn’t turn to face Michael when he speaks; his eyes never leave the screen. But when Michael doesn’t answer right away, he glances back over his shoulder, and Michael learns that not everything about the face Alex grew into is different than the one Michael had memorized once. He still carries ‘I’m right and we both know it’ in the sneaky upward corner of his mouth. 

“I see it all over town,” he continues, voice steady as a house. One eyebrow ticks up. “You’re not as good at avoiding me as you think.”

Michael makes himself breathe in and step forward. He doesn’t stop ‘til he’s shoulder to shoulder with Alex. “That what you think I’m doin’? Avoiding you?”

That same corner of Alex’s mouth speaks before he does. “You tell me, Sanders.” 

Michael tosses his hat onto one of the boxes and scrubs a hand over his curls, mostly to buy himself some time while he remembers how he actually believed he was a quick thinker once.

“You know how this town is, Manes,” he settles on, going for outsized and easy, like Alex’s last name doesn’t feel like a razor blade coming up, every time. “Nothin’ ever changes. ‘Specially not the pick-ups.”

It’s a cop-out of a non-answer. But it’s better than admitting that Michael could never get rid of the old girl. Not when it’s only partially Max-Evans-worthy poetic excess to say that there are lines in the shape of Alex’s back pressed into its body.

Alex repeats Michael's words-- "nothing changes"-- and nods once, his eyes drifting back to the screen. The slide show moved forward again when they weren’t looking, and now it’s showing a group of girls whose names Michael probably knew once. But Michael would bet that’s not who Alex is seeing.

“I used to wonder if  _ you’d  _ change. If you’d leave, while I was away.” 

The words are so toneless, so empty of anything resembling emotion, that Michael thinks he must have misheard them. But when Alex looks over, his eyes are dark and searching in the projector’s light.

“You said you’d never move away from this place. But I just . . . couldn’t imagine anyone choosing to stay here. Especially not someone like you.”

“Someone like me?”

Alex must hear the danger in Michael’s suddenly tight voice, but he doesn’t back down. One more thing he has in common with the boy Michael remembers.

“Smart,” Alex says without hesitation, unconsciously echoing the mantra that’s been failing Michael fast and slowly for a decade now. “Passionate. Not--”

“Hiding?”

Alex flinches back. Which Michael quickly realizes was his goal in putting that particular word in Alex’s mouth in the first place. The satisfaction of provoking a reaction is so unexpectedly good that, for a minute, Michael can brush aside the sting of knowing that they  _ both _ have things they’re not saying, him and Alex.

“No future for that kind of thing in Roswell, is there, Private? Or just not with me?”

Michael’s mouth is flush with Alex’s ear by the time he’s done talking, one hand clamped around Alex’s elbow. He doesn’t remember deciding to come in this close. Not anymore than he remembers deciding to demand answers for a brush-off that Michael had done everything in his power-- and nothing in Isobel’s-- to encourage. But he’s here now, and the smell of Alex sends Michael’s few better angels running for the hills.

Michael takes a deep breath in, savoring the goosebumps that rise on Alex’s neck. “So tell me. How did running away work out for you?”

Michael feels Alex’s whole body go rigid, the second before he breaks Michael’s hold. There’s a memory lurking somewhere in the corner of Michael’s mind sayin’ that’s right, and he’s supposed to let Alex go this time. But the thought gets drowned out by the louder parts of Michael, that always want to be closer.

Michael just barely catches Alex’s wrist in his good hand. He doesn’t have enough leverage to make Alex go anywhere he doesn’t want; Michael doesn’t know if anyone ever has. But the tug is enough to get Alex’s attention.

When Alex rounds on Michael, Michael’s jaw goes slack as ten years melt away in an instant. ‘Cause here he is, after all. No piercing and no split lip, but Michael would recognize that righteous fury anywhere. 

The feelings that tear through Michael must come out on his face, and Alex takes a step away.

“Enough, Sanders. We’re not doing this.” He pauses to wet his lips, and Michael pauses to appreciate how he missed hearing some feeling in Alex’s voice, even the kind that comes when he’s barkin’ out orders. “I’m not the same kid who used to ride around in that damn truck with you!”

“You sure about that? ‘Cause from where I’m standing nothin’s changed.”

Michael feels the truth in the words as he says them. Nothing _ has _ changed. The Alex that drove out to the desert with Michael, that Michael used to hope would turn out to be something other than another Private Manes. . . he was nothing more than wishful thinking, even back then. And Michael’s done nothing but hurt the person Alex really is. Which is exactly why Michael should back away.

He steps closer instead. 

The fire in Alex’s narrowed eyes wavers, and Michael wonders for a heartbeat if the old resignation switch is still alive, too. But he doesn’t want Alex’s resignation. He’ll take Alex’s fire, in every sense; that’s just the kind of stupid he is for Alex. Stupid like Max, like the weakest human of the pack. It’ll have to be Isobel who keeps this sad alien boat of theirs above water-- Isobel who’s the only one of the three of them with the sense to know what kind of start makes a story for the grandkids and what’s a lost cause, and to actually act accordingly.

The projection on the wall behind Michael and Alex goes back to the start of its loop, to a picture of a dark-eyed punk and his guitar, back before anyone but Michael and Jesse thought of him as Manes first and Alex second.

Alex closes his eyes and breathes out-- the centering breath that Michael almost forgot he remembers so well. When he speaks again, the drill-sergeant voice is gone, but the emotion isn’t.

“If we were still them . . . If my dad hadn’t--” Alex cuts himself off, and exhales again. “Would we still be out there in your truck with our guitars? Would we still play?”

Michael’s head and his gut flash through all the reasons he and Alex’s duets would have ended, even in a world where Jesse never walked into the toolshed that night: Michael’s false pretenses, and Alex’s need to run, and the seventy years of star-crossed families that they had the bad luck of being born into.

But the mangled fingers of Michael’s right hand don’t get the message, as they reach forward to brush the fist that’s balled tight against Alex’s side. 

“I’d play anything you want me to,” Michael answers, voice thick with too much of his own feeling. The words are the same kind of line he gave Alex a hundred times in high school; the only difference is this time he has no incentive to give them-- other than the fact that keeping ‘em inside might kill him. “I told you, Alex: nothing changes.”

Alex’s eyes fly open. He looks, just for a moment, like he wants to fight Michael on it-- and he’d be right to.

But then one of them is movin’ first, and the other is meeting them more than halfway, and Michael learns that Alex still kisses just like he always did-- strong, and stubborn, and overwhelming, like he’s worried someone might take this away if he doesn’t give it everything he’s got. Michael responds the only way he knows how-- by holding on tight and devouring everything Alex gives him, so there’s nothing left to steal whenever Alex’s monsters come.

When Alex’s hand snakes up to grip the back of Michael’s neck and Michael lets out a breath he’s been holding for ten years, he tells himself this is fine. That it’s one last night for old times’ sake, and  _ then  _ he’ll leave Alex alone.

It’s another lie. But that’s nothin’ new.

Michael’s never been good at keeping track of his lies when Alex’s hands are on him.

  
  


#

  
  


“You’re awake.” 

Michael blinks, his eyes working to adjust to the shadow-gray half-light that means it’s just-barely-morning in the uplands. Alex’s cabin out in the woods doesn’t catch the early desert sun like the trailer does, or even like Michael’s crappy airstream does, on the mornings that Michael has the grown-up kind of company and doesn’t want to entertain ‘em a wall away from his dad. The cabin is too hidden away for that. Just like the man who lives here, whose calloused hands are tracing careful patterns over Michael’s ribcage.

To nobody’s surprise, ‘one last night’ at the reunion had turned into to ‘one last night plus one more for the road’ the morning after. Afterwards, Michael had told himself  _ that  _ was it, while Alex drove him the almost hour back into town, to the parking lot where Michael had left the truck when they high-tailed it out of the reunion. He’d even kissed Alex soft and slow behind Alex’s tinted windows, to prove that it was goodbye. But then two minutes before the garage closed that night, Alex was standing in the doorway, backlit by the front lot’s overheads. And between Michael’s spiritual need to peel that damn uniform off of him, and the strategic need to keep Alex’s eagle eyes from paying too much attention to the metal edge of trap door visible beneath the airstream’s front wheels, Michael hadn’t blinked, let alone paused to think about the promises he’d made. Between one tick of the clock and the next, he’d had them crushed together in the airstream’s narrow cot with their pants around their ankles, goin’ at it fast and filthy in a way their nervous seventeen-year-old selves would’ve spontaneously combusted just to dream of.

And now, a week later, Michael’s wakin’ up to Alex’s lips soft against his sternum. 

“Mornin.’” 

Michael feels Alex’s mouth curl against his stomach at the sleepy greeting. And just like that, his left hand is moving to cup the back of Alex’s skull, stiff fingers tangling in silky hair. His good hand reaches automatically for the nightstand, feelin’ around for the mug that, despite all promises to the contrary, he’s woken up in Alex’s bed enough times to expect will be there.

When his fingers don’t find ceramic he frowns. “You didn’t make your coffee yet?”

Alex detaches his lips from Michael’s skin and slides up to lie nose to nose, tucking one hand under this head while the other caresses the line of Michael’s jaw. “I wasn’t ready to get up yet.” 

It’s a lot, when Alex looks at Michael like that-- like there’s nothin’ inside him but longing. It makes Michael flush hot with pride and shame all at once. 

It also makes him wonder where all that longing goes, during the times Alex decides to pull away instead of come closer.

Alex isn’t pulling away right now, though. Michael opens his mouth to kiss at the fingers that skip from his jaw to the bridge of his nose, then down. “You see somethin’ worth staying in bed for, Private?”

“You know ‘private’ is an Army thing, right? As opposed to Air Force-- the branch that I actually serve in?”

Michael ignores the twist in his gut at the reminder. “Not an answer.”

Alex rolls his eyes, even as his hand skates tenderly down Michael’s throat to rest over Michael’s heartbeat. “What do you think?”

Truth is, Michael doesn’t know. That’s the whole issue between him and Alex. 

That  _ would  _ be the whole issue between him and Alex. If it weren’t for the three to four insurmountable tragedies, plus Michael’s own history of bad intentions, crowding the little bit of space between them. But Michael doesn’t want to think about those impossible obstacles just yet-- not when the sun’s hardly risen. So he stretches out this body that Alex can’t seem to stop touching and smirks. “I think we’re both lucky that I only get hotter with age.”

Alex shakes his head. But it’s exasperation, not denial. “I guess it’s good that time’s been kind to one of us.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’ve really let yourself go since high school.”

“My right leg would beg to differ.” 

Michael’s fingers freeze where they’ve tangled with Alex’s against the trail of hair leading down from his stomach. 

Alex feels Michael tense and just raises a dark eyebrow. “It’s all right, Sanders. I’m not going to break down if you mention it. I know it’s not a pretty sight.”

As far as Michael’s concerned, there’s no part of Alex-- besides his family name-- that’s less than stunning, even the parts that used to look and work differently. But Michael’s not about to tell Alex how to feel about his own injury. Not when Michael can feel Alex’s frustration when the prosthetic he’s still adjusting to comes down wrong, or when Alex has to juggle crutches and his coffee mug in the morning dim, or when the skin-hunger that still burns like wildfire between them has to go on ice for a second while they flip over or grab a pillow to find a spot where Alex can take Michael apart without wrecking his back in the process.

Not when Michael wasn’t there when Alex’s body changed forever. 

Not when Michael won’t ever know for sure how much blame _ he _ carries for Alex going to war in the first place.

Michael makes himself unclench his fingers. His squeezes them around Alex’s instead, and leads both their hands to Alex’s abs.

“Not like time’s been all bad, though.”

Alex’s incredulous huff is reason enough for Michael to slide his hand away from Alex’s, so that he can glide his palm across Alex’s hip and then trace up the line of Alex’s spine, over the thick trapezius muscle, and down wiry triceps that used to send Michael starward even when the arms that Alex wrapped around him were seventeen and spindly. 

“I definitely don’t remember you being this jacked in high school, for one thing.” 

Alex laughs, short and surprised. “Physical therapy will do that.” He furrows his eyebrows and bites his lip. “‘One thing’?”

No matter how many things about them change, that hesitant, hopeful look on Alex’s face will never be something Michael can resist without a struggle. So he rolls onto his stomach to continue his list.

“Well, I’m not complainin’ about whatever you’ve been doin’ to train away your gag reflex, either,” he says, to a snort. “Also, not gonna lie: I don’t miss tryin’ to get your septum piercing untangled from the curls.” 

“That was, like, one time.” Alex groans, reaching up to brush at the wild strands at Michael’s temple, where he likes to bury his nose when he seizes up and comes so quietly.

_ Once was definitely enough _ , Michael thinks about saying. Except that’s never really true with him and Alex, even when it should be. He goes quiet instead, letting his eyes soak in golden skin. The smooth stretch of it gives way to rough scar tissue on Alex’s right leg, and a few other places besides. But the purple-green-yellow patchwork that painted Alex at seventeen is gone. There are no fresh hurts. 

Not physical ones anyway.

Michael stretches his mangled hand as far as it will go and brings it down to gently cover the base of Alex’s throat, which Michael can still remember ringed with bruises. He pushes away the thought of Max splaying his own hand over the hole in Liz’s chest, but meaning it-- willing to accept any price, no matter who has to pay it. And Michael standing by with nothing but a shove in the wrong direction, when his own Liz had decided to run into danger.

Michael feels Alex shift to see what stole Michael’s attention, can picture the puzzled look on his face at why Michael is staring at his own useless hand against Alex’s skin, even before their gazes meet.

When they do, Michael loses another fight with his self-control. “This is a good change, too,” he says, before he can stop himself. “Not having to walk around wearin’ his bruises anymore.”

Alex makes a strangled noise so soft that Michael can’t even hear it, just feel the shape of it leaving Alex’s throat. Michael can’t commit to the swaggering cowboy routine hard enough to give him hell for it. Not when Alex’s own hand comes up to hold Michael’s ruined fingers, and he looks at Michael like that. So dazed and starstruck that Michael could almost make himself believe Alex won’t ever look away again. 

Until two sharp honks sound outside the window, and Alex pulls away so fast the box spring bounces.

Michael’s cell phone starts blowing up on Alex’s nightstand, and when Michael swipes the screen, he lets out a sigh.

“It’s just my-- Isobel,” he says, hoping the ID will make Alex chill out enough to quit scanning everything on the nightstand for its value as a weapon.

The look Alex shoots him has zero chill at all.

“How does she know to find you here? Does she know about us?”

Isobel knows where to find Michael, because she, Michael, and Max all have their phone GPS shared with each other, on account of being secret alien refugees with a probable bounty on their heads courtesy of Alex’s family. But that’s not something Michael plans to share with Captain Manes. And that’s exactly who’s in the bed with Michael right now, shooting off questions that he expects will be answered.

“It a problem if she knows?” Michael asks instead of complying with the Captain’s demands. Even though he damn well already knows Alex’s answer. 

“Yeah, Michael. That would be a problem for me.” 

Michael doesn’t dignify their old song with a response, just gets up and starts grabbing clothes off the floor. Once he’s wearing the bare minimum that will keep Isobel from bitching about his bare ass on her leather seats, he stalks out of the bedroom, making a beeline to the front door.

He hears the uneven thump and muttered cursing that means Alex is struggling to situate himself with his crutches, and forces himself not to slow down. By the time Alex makes it to the front room, Michael’s got a hand on the doorknob.

“Sanders, wait.”

The sight of Alex still half-naked and calling out for Michael is a powerful thing. But the pull of Michael’s anger is even stronger. ‘Cause while the anger has never exactly made Michael feel quiet, it’s loud enough itself to drown out other loud things that hurt more to hear. Like the thought of how stupid he is, for letting himself pretend all over again that Alex will ever stop leaving Michael in the dust. Or how selfish he is, for getting the boxers he’s not wearing in a twist about that fact, when the secrets that Michael hides about their relationship would give Alex every right to run screaming.

Or that this is just one more reason that he should have kept his promise and never let this thing with Alex start up again in the first place.

Michael opens the door, and pauses just long enough to throw one last look over his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell her whose place this is.”

“Michael--” 

“See you around, Private.”

The slamming door cuts off anything Alex might say after that. 

Michael lets his shoulders slump just long enough to force his lungs to take a full breath in. Then he straightens himself up and stomps toward Isobel’s car, hoping for once in his life that this time it’s a real emergency.

  
  


#

  
  


‘Emergency’ is an understatement, it turns out. 

“So let me get this straight. Liz Ortecho-- who you swore up and down would never, ever betray your precious fairytale love-- took all of twenty-four hours to blab about us to her ex, who then immediately took that information to Jesse  _ The Walking War Crime _ Manes. That it?”

Max’s head is hanging so low the tip of his nose is practically dragging on his kitchen table, but Michael-- who hasn’t stopped pacing since Isobel drove them both to Max’s house then shared with the class what she’s learned-- isn’t exactly feelin’ sympathetic right now.

“We don’t know that Liz told Kyle about  _ us _ ,” Max insists, testing the last ragged threads of brotherly affection that are keeping Michael from resorting to physical violence. “Just that there are . . . individuals out there with powers. And that one of them healed her. Right, Iz?” 

Isobel sighs from her perch on Max’s counter. “I didn’t sense that he knew about  _ us _ in particular. But I only had a few seconds to poke around. I couldn’t say for sure. He’s definitely seen the handprint, though. And he knows that Liz suspects a connection with Rosa’s disappearance.”

“And what exactly made Liz think that Rosa’s disappearance was alien-related? Other than not being born yesterday?”

Isobel gives Max an apologetic look before answering Michael’s question. “Apparently, Liz told Kyle that the handprint let her see . . . flashes, from the person who healed her. Of their memories.”

Michael resists the urge to overturn Max’s refrigerator with his mind. Or his hands. “Great. So Jesse Manes doesn’t necessarily know that three of  _ us _ are aliens, just that there are alien-shaped things walkin’ around Roswell and one of them is stupid enough over Liz Ortecho to risk their cover by slapping a glow-in-the-dark,  _ telepathic _ handprint in the center of her chest. We’re saved.”

Max opens his mouth to answer Michael’s taunt, but luckily for all of them, Isobel holds out a hand to interrupt. “Enough. Sniping at each other isn’t going to solve anything. We need to figure out our next steps.”

“How about you scramble Manes and Valenti’s brains, and I drop ‘em both into a trash compactor with  _ my _ brain? ‘Cause that’s where I’m leanin.’”

“No one is scrambling or compacting anyone,” Isobel insists. “Not yet. We at least need to figure out what they know first. And if there’s anything we can do about it.”

Michael blows out an angry breath, but he can’t disagree, as much as he’s itching to lead with violence. “You plan on getting up close and personal with the inside of Valenti’s head again anytime soon?”

Isobel shakes her head. “He only stopped by my condo for a couple minutes this morning, and that was to formally end things between us. We’re just lucky I found his ‘it’s-not-you-it’s-me’ speech tedious enough to take one last look around during all the open, adult communication.”

Michael’s eyes narrow. “He ended things? Do you think that’s because he suspects--”

“No, it’s not that.” Isobel rolls her eyes to the ceiling, then pastes on a perky smile. “Apparently, he’s still in love with his ex.”

Michael’s mind drifts automatically to the pleading airman that he left standing in his own secret cabin an hour ago. But when he catches Isobel’s meaning, he throws his arms out to the side, well and truly confounded.

“Are tomorrow's lottery numbers printed on the inside of Liz Ortecho’s bra? What is it about her that you’re all so desperate for another run at?”

Max sits up in his chair, like he’s going to break his sullen silence to come to his not-girlfriend’s defense, but Isobel cuts him off again.

“Boys! Seriously. Debate the merits of Liz’s decolletage on your own time.” 

Michael spares one more disbelieving head shake for Max, then angles his whole body away so he doesn’t do anything unforgivable, watching that irritating kicked-puppy expression while it mourns somebody whose family only became their family’s enemy because of things that the pod crew itself did, rather than the other way around. Instead he develops a passionate interest in the Little Jade Man takeout menu stuck to the refrigerator with a Sylvia Plath magnet.

“We don’t have an in with Kyle anymore,” Isobel continues, while Michael reads lo mein options and waits for his blood pressure to settle. “But that’s not actually our biggest problem right now. Kyle’s a civilian-- and somehow kind of a pacifist, despite his depressingly Cobra Kai high school years. The only danger he poses is who he talks to. What we  _ really  _ need to figure out is how much Jesse Manes and his military buddies know. And what they plan to do about it.”

Isobel huffs out a sigh that’s obviously meant to show how impossible that ask is. But Michael’s eyes are already falling shut, his forehead meeting creased paper.

“I’m guessing neither of you have any secret ins with the Manes Family and/or medium-to-high-ranking Air Force officers that you’ve neglected to mention?” 

The siren alert on her phone drowns out the sound of Michael grinding his teeth hard enough to crack bone. But it doesn’t do anything to silence the screaming storm inside of Michael, that only he is privy to. 

“Crap. Bean Me Up liked a bunch of videos of underage girls blowing softly into microphones from the company account.  _ Again _ . I have to take this. Try not to kill each other before I get back?”

Michael hears Isobel jump down from the counter and power walk across the linoleum, followed by the creak of the door that leads to Max’s patio and then muffled lecture-shouting. But he’s not really listening. Instead, he’s squeezing his eyes shut against the echoes of his own voice, swearing to change his ways if this shithole planet would only spare Alex. Swearing to do right by Alex. Swearing to never use the sacred thing that exists-- existed-- between him and Alex, if only in Michael’s head, again.

“Michael.”

Michael opens his eyes and whirls away from his refrigerator cave, spinning until he’s facing the kitchen table head-on. The fake-motherly concern in Max’s voice is bad enough, but actually seeing the don’t-give-up-on-love gleam in his droopy eyes is more than Michael take.

“Don’t.”

He all but spits the word, but Max never was one to listen to anyone but himself. “Michael, you don’t have to--”

“Except I  _ do _ have to, Max! You made sure of that!”

The shout comes out at just a fraction of the volume trapped inside Michael, but it shuts Max up at last anyway. Or maybe it’s the words themselves that do it. Either way, Max immediately stares down at the tabletop again.

He doesn’t say he’s sorry; Michael doesn’t think he ever will. But as he sits there nodding mutely at Michael’s fury, his eyes scrunch up like he’s holding back tears.

Michael scrubs a hand over his face, catching on the stubble he didn’t have time to shave this morning, in the split second between lying in Alex’s arms and storming out on him. 

He makes himself exhale.

“Look, I get why you did what you did, the night that Liz got shot. I don’t like it, but--” 

Michael pauses, flexes his stiff hand. An unplanned movement. Involuntary.

“. . . but I get it, okay? As for the rest of it . . . what happened, happened,” he tells Max, forcing a calm he doesn’t feel, at the thought of exactly how much _ has _ happened, and how close they are to finding out the wrong way whether the military really is running a secret prison for aliens. “No changin’ it now. But I’m going to do what I have to to keep us safe from here on out.” 

It’s a nicer way of saying ‘I’m going to keep sleeping with Alex Manes to figure out what his family knows and also to try and keep him sweet, in case he’s in on it.’ Michael pushes down a miserable pang at the thought, and points gnarled fingers at Max.

“I don’t answer to you on this, okay? And you do  _ not  _ get to judge me for it.”

Michael can handle the judging fine all by himself.

Max accepts Michael’s command with another mute nod, which is as good as Michael’s going to get. He lets out one more sigh, and then they both wait in silence for Isobel to finish up her call, wallowing in the wrecks they’ve made of their own respective hearts-- one by trusting, one by refusing to trust.

  
  


#

  
  


Step one of Michael’s plan to go back to the bad old days with Alex is to make up for the pissing contest that ensued after the softest moment of either of their lives got crashed by deus ex Isobel. 

In a normal relationship-- not that Michael’s ever had one of those-- he might not be so quick to play the guilty party. Not when the way Alex snapped to attention at the thought of Isobel knowin’ about them brought back so many old memories of Alex holding himself back from Michael. Playing things down. Running away. 

But ‘normal’ got left behind seventy years and few solar systems back, and Michael’s pretty sure people who are sleeping with the enemy in order to learn the enemy’s secrets don’t get to complain that the enemy doesn’t want them enough. So he tells himself to suck it up and get on with the patented Michael Sanders charm offensive.

Michael’s first attempt at gettin’ himself out of the doghouse involves finding Alex at the drive-in veterans’ benefit that Isobel organizes each year, and letting the bed of Michael’s truck work its old magic-- while leaving enough room for the holy spirit plus all the plausible deniability Alex always seems to require. But that plan goes to hell when Michael learns that Isobel’s had another of the attacks of conscience that have plagued her since the night she totaled Rosa Ortecho’s car, and that she’s gone and told Max the truth about why Liz left town without saying goodbye ten years ago. Specifically, Michael learns that’s what happened when six-plus-feet of weepy, angry amateur poet charges over and wails as much. 

At first, Michael holds out hope of sticking to his self-assigned task of finding Alex’s SUV among the sea of tinted windows and inviting him back down memory lane, despite Max’s interruption. But then Max makes the mistake of telling Michael that Michael has no idea what it feels like, to go all those years thinkin’ the person you love left because you weren’t worth staying for, only to learn it was all a lie. At that point, a cord that’s been fraying for a decade finally snaps, and the next thing Michael knows, he and Max are rolling in the dirt, testing out how many bruised knuckles it takes to block out the ache of spending ten years in someone’s rearview mirror.

It’s Michael’s dad who manages to pull them apart-- ‘cause ten years on, Sanders still has a sixth sense for when Michael’s doin’ something that would have forced a parent-teacher conference, back when Michael was a teenager. It’s only when Michael’s back on his feet, testing the puffy spot on his lower lip where he tastes copper, that he finally sees the two Manes Men standing two icy feet apart from each other, silhouetted by the sunset, watching the spectacle. Jesse looks like Christmas came early, his shark eyes so smug Michael can barely keep his dinner down. And Alex--

Alex looks the same way he has every time Michael’s gotten into some dumb, macho scrap in front of him.

Like he’s about five minutes from stepping on a plane to another hemisphere.

  
  


#

  
  


After his drive-in plans go to crap and somehow make things between him and Alex even worse, Michael realizes he’s gonna need to go big if he wants to get back into the good graces of the man he loves and can’t afford to trust. So that he can proceed to lie, spy, and double-cross him. 

Flowers are the go-to move, at least according to the army of Roswell bachelors and bachelorettes-- minus Kyle Valenti, apparently-- who line up around the block to let Isobel stuff a gag in their mouth. But he’s not sure what kind of flower says ‘can we start sleeping together again so that I can track your movements more easily, and also ‘cause I’ve been screwed up about the way you think you don’t snore since we were teenagers?’ And he kinda doubts the lady who runs Unidentified Floral Object would be much help figurin’ it out, no matter how many favors she owes Iz after the time she let her twenty-year-old nephew take over the company instagram. 

Besides, Michael can’t exactly picture Alex melting over a handful of Cosmic Calla Lilies. Not anymore than he can picture Alex buying flowers to try and melt somebody else. Alex reaches out in different ways.

Which is why Michael’s heart starts to rush-- his pulse loud in the quiet that otherwise envelops his insides-- when he sees the beat-up case at the flea market Isobel drags him to on Saturday morning so that she can stock up on even more tile artwork while trying to play family therapist for him and Max. He makes the purchase, ignoring Isobel’s skeptical look, and spends the rest of Saturday tinkering in his underground lair, foregoing the physics-bending tools he’s engineered to wrangle glowing ship parts, in favor of the down-to-earth stuff. 

And that’s how he comes to finds himself standing on Alex’s cabin’s doorstep with his good hand sweating around a newly repaired plastic handle.

The door swings open before he can knock. 

“Sanders? What are you doing here? It’s past midnight.”

Michael’s brain goes quiet again-- in a fuzzy way this time, like the static between stations on the radio dial-- at the sight of Alex frowning in the doorway. He’s already changed for bed, prosthetic off and crutches on, wearing soft sweatpants that are tied off below his right thigh. Even the Air Force insignia on the thin tee shirt he’s wearing doesn’t set off enough noise in Michael’s head to disrupt the sudden calm.

Alex stays on high alert. He looks Michael up and down, his eyebrows pulling even closer together when he sees the case in Michael’s right hand.

“Is that a guitar case?”

The wrinkle over his nose should be illegal, especially when Michael’s supposed to be focused on the mission, distracted by nothin’ except his own guilt.

He looks down at where Alex’s gaze is pointed.

“Uh. Yeah.” 

Some frickin’ genius.

Alex’s eyebrows agree with Michael’s self-assessment. “Did you bring me a guitar?” 

Michael shakes himself to get it together. It works enough to let him cock his head and pull on his best sarcastic slow-drawl. 

“No, Alex. I brought you a motorcycle. I just put it in this guitar case.”

Alex rolls his eyes-- another look that Michael’s been chasing for the better part of a decade-- and Michael’s footing gets surer. 

“I noticed you didn’t have one at the cabin, last time I was here.”

“Last time you were here,” Alex repeats, in a voice that reminds them both-- if they needed reminding-- that the last time Michael was here, he was blowing out of this door with his jeans still unbuttoned because Alex’s iron self-control still bites that hard at the idea of starting something real with Michael. 

“I was out.” He almost adds ‘with Isobel,’ but stops himself just in time, because they’re doin’ just fine on the flashbacks to their big fight without name-checking the person whose unannounced arrival sent them spiraling. “I saw this old girl for sale, secondhand. She was in rough shape, but I took her back to my workshop. She should treat you all right now. Probably needs a good tuning, though.”

Alex is still staring at Michael like he can’t decide whether to stick with the skepticism he wears like armor or give in to the hope he stores underneath that. Michael tries not to think about how much is riding on him convincing Alex to make the  _ wrong  _ choice. 

Alex still hasn’t seemed to settle between doubt and faith when he adjusts his stance on the crutches and tips his head to one side. “You have a workshop?” 

Crap.

Alex starts nodding before Michael can work up an answer. “Of course. That’s what’s hidden under your airstream.” 

Michael tries to cover the jolt that goes through him at hearing that Alex hasn’t just noticed the underground bunker where Michael is stashing half a spaceship’s worth of alien artifacts, but has been wondering what’s inside of it. Doesn’t work, though-- going by the new eye roll Alex musters, which is even more exaggerated than the one that met Michael’s earlier sarcasm.

“I work in military counterintelligence, Michael. It’s not a stretch to notice when an RV is parked on top of a subterranean entry point.”

Not for the first time, Michael thinks about how much easier his life could have been, if Alex Manes was anything other than what he is. Or Michael was anything other than what  _ he _ is.

“Knowing it’s a workshop is kind of a relief,” Alex continues, ducking his head. “I thought maybe you were cooking meth.”

Michael  _ knows  _ he doesn’t do a good job covering the stab of irritation-- and the ache of something tenderer underneath-- at Captain Manes’ immediate assumption that of course Michael’s grown into the hot mess he was on his way to becoming at the tail end of their senior year. The hot mess he  _ wanted _ Alex to think he was becoming. For a brief, blazingly stupid moment, Michael wonders if it might have sucked less if Alex really had suspected Michael of harboring UFO parts, instead of falling so easily for the show Michael put on in 2008.

Alex, the great counterintelligence specialist, clearly registers Michael’s offense. He doesn’t back down; he never does. But he does try to sand down the rough edges of his accusation. “There’s a strong chemical odor in the airstream. I noticed it even over the smell of--”

But he cuts himself off mid-explanation, looking down at his lone bare foot. When his eyes snap back up to Michael’s, he’s all business once again.

“Regardless. I can’t accept this, Michael.” He just barely glances at the guitar case. “It’s too much.”

Michael’s hand clenches around the handle. The part of him that remembers he’s supposed to be playing contrite boyfriend right now gets shoved aside by the wave of hurt that goes through him, at the reminder that, ten years on, Alex can hand out guitars to a kid he barely knows to his heart’s content, but he still won’t take anything from Michael. The hurt sounds a lot like the parts inside Michael that he’s been trying to ignore all day, that keep on piping up to remind him that, when he saw the old guitar at the flea market this morning, his  _ first  _ thought had nothing to do with plans and schemes and everything to do with how his heart had clenched, that first morning he spent at Alex’s cabin, realizing that the boy who wanted to make music has ended up hiding himself away someplace where there is none.

Michael tries to push the hurt away, but he knows it comes out in his voice. 

“Why? Scared I bought it with my Breaking Bad money?”

Alex has the courtesy to look shame-faced, but the roots he’s planted don’t budge an inch. “You’ve obviously put a lot of time and effort into restoring it. You should keep it.”

Michael hoists his free hand up in the space between them, the scarred knuckles facing Alex. “Not much point in me keepin’ it, is there?”

There’s just the smallest twitch of movement around Alex’s mouth, and at the corners of his eyes. But that twist of misery obliterates his Resting Officer Face-- just for a second, until he gets himself back in order. Once he does, he rests his weight on one crutch, and brings his hand to the door. 

Michael sees immediately that Alex is about to close the wood slab between them, and he can’t let that happen. His bad hand strikes out again, this time coming to rest on the jamb, right where the bolt of the lock will hit if Alex carries through with the movement he’s already started.

Alex stops immediately, just like Michael knew he would. Whatever hold the Manes legacy has over Alex, he’s not his father. He won’t put his scars on Michael’s body. 

Not physically. 

Not yet.

“What do you want, Sanders?”

There’s a whole universe of emotion simmering under Alex’s careful Captain voice. All that intensity at the core of him expresses itself differently now than it did before he went off to war, back when his hurt and his sense of injustice would ring out so easy. But Michael’s ear is acclimating to the new restrained music that Alex’s tightly coiled feelings make. And his mouth is opening to take advantage of what he’s learned.

“I wanna make things up to you. I want to apologize.” 

The declaration brings Alex up short. 

“What do you have to apologize for?”

It breaks Michael’s heart, the honest confusion on Alex’s face. Like it really hasn’t occurred to him that Michael could have things between them to be sorry for. Like after all these years of  _ knowingly  _ suffering through Michael’s meltdown at the end of high school, and  _ unknowingly  _ suffering through Michael’s betrayal for a lot longer than that, he still doesn’t know what’s comin’ for him one day.

Michael breathes in then out through his nose, pushing the sorrow and the regret away for later, focusing on the part he’s playing right now. “For what happened at the drive-in,” he says, even though that’s the very least of the regrets that are clattering through him. 

Alex starts to shake his head, like he’s gonna claim ignorance, but Michael keeps talking.

“I know you were there, Private. Woulda been hard to miss the way you and daddy dearest looked at me.” 

“What you do on your own time is your business, Michael. You and I are not together. I have no right to tell you--” 

“Yeah, but you still hate it when I fight. Always have.” Michael lets out a sigh that he can’t help, remembering Alex at seventeen, both hands shaking after he finally punched back for once at senior prom. “And I always knew.”

Alex at twenty-seven takes Michael’s words in, his focus drifting somewhere Michael can’t follow. Like always.

“I used to wonder if you did it on purpose sometimes,” he finally says, voice impossibly neutral. “To punish me. After what my dad did to you. You would have been within your rights.”

Michael’s not ready for swell of remorse that Alex’s words touch off. He shakes his head hard against it. “I never blamed you for him,” he insists, like if he says it loud enough it won’t feel like such a scalding lie.

‘Cause it is a lie. It’s a lie in every way except for the one way Alex is actually talking about. Jesse and that hammer and the toolshed is the only Manes crime that Michael hasn’t tried to pin on Alex. Only on Michael’s laughably human feelings for Alex.

But Alex doesn’t know that. He narrows his eyes at Michael’s denial. “I never saw you hurt a fly a day in your life. Then my father attacked you, and overnight you became this . . . walking barfight. And I . . . I could  _ not  _ handle it.”

Michael makes himself nod, pushing down the urge to spill his secrets like Max and explain that it wasn’t Alex’s fault the way everything between them changed after that night. Pushing down the equal urge to ask whether it was really the fighting Alex didn’t want to handle. Or if it was just being with Michael that was too much for him. “You never wanted to be around violence.”

Alex snorts. “Right. So I decided to go to war to get away from it.” 

He exhales and lifts his eyes up to the stars above them. Michael holds still, just watching. When Alex brings his gaze back down to earth, where Michael has been stranded seventy years, his dark eyes are all resolve.

“I don’t regret joining up, not entirely. I know that’s not what you want to hear,” Alex adds, probably at the way his words nearly make Michael stagger. “But this place, my father-- even you, after awhile. It wasn’t good for me, Michael. I needed to leave. And I found value in my service, even though it’s not the life I ever wanted for myself. Even though there are things I’ve done-- that I still do-- that I’m not proud of.”

Even in this moment, when Alex is saying he was glad to leave and Michael  _ still  _ keeps falling harder for the challenge in his voice, Michael can’t help but wonder about those things Alex isn’t proud of. Specifically, if any of those things has to do with what Alex’s family has done to Michael’s people. And if not, whether that’s because Alex hasn’t been read in on the alien threat yet. Or whether it’s because his thinking is no different than any other Manes, when it comes to how to treat a species whose crime is having more abilities than humans can dream of, no matter how clumsily Michael is using them. 

In the doorway, Alex takes one more deep breath in and sets his jaw. “Being with me . . . it’s not the easy choice for you, Michael. I get that. I live a life that you hate. And I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to be with  _ anyone  _ publicly without hearing my father’s voice in my head, saying that I should be ashamed of who I am.”

At the sideways reference to what happened when Isobel dropped by, and the contrite grimace that steals over Alex’s face, the penny finally drops. Michael’s stomach follows it to the ground, with his heart diving after for good measure. And then Michael’s high-and-mighty brain, that came here ready to fight Alex for the spot by Alex’s side that Michael has every intention of abusing, finally gets in on the act. And he hears the part of Alex’s list of reasons that Michael should take his guitar and go, that Alex isn’t saying out loud.

The part that says ‘please stay with me, anyway.’

“You said the other day that the person I am now isn’t all bad, to you. If you’ve changed your mind about that, believe me-- I wouldn’t blame you. But if that’s still true, then--” Alex stops to bite his lip, like it’s harder for him to get out this second alternative than it is to give Michael his blessing to cut and run. “-- you know where to find me.”

Michael watches as Alex nods once and limps back into the house, deliberately leaving the door open behind him. For once, undefended.

Michael stands there on the stoop for a full thirty seconds before he follows. Not because he isn’t sure if he wants to. But because he can’t stop himself from imagining what it would feel like, if he only had  _ one  _ reason for walking through that door, and turning Alex around, and kissing him ‘til the surprise that doesn’t belong on that gorgeous face melts away. 

Michael wonders, as he drops the guitar to the floor and wraps both arms around Alex’s neck, if he’d be so aware, in that imaginary world, of how nothin’s stopping the hand that lets go of one crutch to cover Michael’s hip from slipping away again. If the Michael in that world would hear how the little whimpers that Alex locks in the back of his throat sound like borrowed time. 

If there’s a universe where Michael would actually feel like he deserves this.

  
  


#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UP NEXT: The truth hunts you down. And also doesn't.


	6. Act Two, part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He feels Alex’s gaze turn skyward, too. For a while they lie in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Michael’s just about to let his eyes slip shut, leave the stars and all the rest for tomorrow, when Alex’s voice stops him short._
> 
> _“Do you think they ever really knew each other?” Alex asks, quiet and even. “Those kids out in the desert, in the back of your truck?”_
> 
> _Michael freezes. Alex feels it._
> 
> Ten years on, part two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we reach the second half of the ~Season 1 arc. In some ways, everything in this story has been leading here: to the truth. About Michael. About Alex. About that prison out in the desert. Specific warnings here for the Caulfield Prison storyline; as with previous chapters, there's no explicit graphic violence, but we are in Michael's head during a moment of deep loss. 
> 
> In terms of Michael and Alex's relationship, I think of this chapter as finally ripping off the bandage that Michael has been avoiding for five chapters (and ten years). This is where Alex figures out what's really going on. But it's also where Michael figures out some truths, too. The defenses he's been hiding behind about who Alex is, and about his own motives, are all stripped away by the end of this chapter. All that's left is to figure out how to live with the past. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and for all of your immensely generous encouragement; I'm enormously grateful. Final chapter should be out this weekend!

The next couple weeks are a delicate dance. Between fishing for the intel that Michael and his siblings need, and not unduly raising the suspicions of a decorated special ops vet with almost thirty years of practice looking over his shoulder. Between the smile that steals over Michael’s face every time he wakes up to the soft sweep of Alex’s palm over his belly, and the frown that wants to follow when he remembers why he’s waking up in Alex’s bed in the first place. Between the satisfaction Michael tells himself he feels each time he remembers to remind himself whose blood flows thorough Alex’s veins, and the nagging uncertainty about when the uniform stopped being reminder enough. Between sharing what he finds, and not spending more time than he can stomach with Max’s wounded disappointment and Isobel’s increasing suspicion about what it is she’s missing that has her brothers at each other’s throats. Between everything Michael sees in Alex’s eyes sometimes, and the knowledge that he’s seen it all before and Alex left anyway. Between love and guilt, loud and quiet.

Between his body and Alex’s body, in the dark, and the dance they’re best at, that makes all the other steps Michael’s tryin’ to follow fade to nothing.

‘Til morning, anyway.

Michael stumbles into the cabin’s dilapidated kitchen, stopping only when his hands find the coffee pot, and then the mug that Alex has left beside it for him, like usual. When he’s gotten half a mug’s worth of Alex’s sludge brew down his throat, he looks around. Alex is nowhere in sight, but he hasn’t gone far. There’s the Chaves County sheriff’s department mug sitting out on the kitchen table still a quarter full, and the boots-- one specially fitted-- by the door.

And there’s the file folder lying open on the coffee table in the main room. 

Michael’s breath catches in his throat. He uses his TK to set his mug down noiselessly, then takes a glance around before padding over to the coffee table, thanking his people’s stars that his feet are as bare as the rest of him. 

He can make out a row of symbols that look too close for comfort to the ones that shimmer all over the ship pieces hidden in his bunker, when his foot catches on the edge of a matted throw rug that he didn’t remember being here the first few nights he stayed over at the cabin. When he kneels down to cover his tracks, the lay of the floorboards beneath his fingers sets somethin’ off in his engineering brain. He follows the seam beneath the planks until it disappears under the base of the heavy coffee table. With one more glance over his shoulder, he narrows his eyes and focuses on making the table hover a foot in the air.

He just has time to see the handles of what’s clearly a hidden door before the sound of flushing pipes sets him scrambling.

The coffee table’s back in its spot, and Michael’s leaning against the kitchen counter, mug in hand, when Alex emerges from the bathroom.

When Alex spots Michael, he smiles. The expression makes grown-up Alex in his fatigues seem so close to young Alex in his pretentious band tee shirts, that Michael can’t even make himself enjoy the relief at not getting caught; he’s too busy ignoring yet another stab from a realization he keeps putting off having. 

“You’re up.” 

Michael takes a sip of cooling coffee to steady himself. When the mug comes down, his dirty cowboy smirk is in place.

“Not yet, but you keep smilin’ at me like that, and I will be.”

Alex doesn’t answer, except to stride over and wrap his arms low around Michael’s waist, his heavy sleeves rough against Michael’s skin. “I think I can do better than a smile.”

Michael still doesn’t know all of Jim Valenti’s secrets, but he takes some comfort in thinkin’ that, if the man really was involved in Jesse Manes’ anti-alien conspiracy, maybe his punishment will be that his ghost has to stand here and watch an alien come hard down Alex Manes’ throat, in the middle of his precious hunting cabin.

And if he wasn’t involved, maybe his revenge against Michael’s relentless mistrust will be seeing how putting the sharpest, toughest Manes Man on his metaphorical knees doesn’t make that superpowered alien go anything but kitten-weak.

When Michael’s caught his breath enough to try to return the favor, Alex takes a step back. ‘Cause of course he does.

“Not this morning, cowboy. I’m going to be late as it is.”

At Michael’s grumble, Alex rolls his eyes. But the effect is spoiled by the soft kiss he drops onto Michael’s lips, and the way his strong hand slides down to carefully cup Michael’s backside just for a second, before gliding away again.

“Tonight. I promise.”

“Big talk. ‘Til I get stood up for Kyle Valenti again.”

Alex has the good grace to wince. Michael feels the movement all around him where he’s still nuzzling into Alex’s chest, eyes closed so he doesn’t have to see that everything he’s holdin’ onto-- and that’s somehow holding him right back-- is property of the U.S. military. 

“I’m sorry about last night. Kyle and I have been working on a project. We lost track of time.”

There’s an old involuntary drop in Michael’s stomach, at the thought of what ‘project’ a Manes and a Valenti might be working so hard at, a month after Liz Ortecho’s loose lips sent Kyle running to Jesse Manes. But the well-worn suspicion is easier than it should be to ignore, for a little while anyway, when Alex gently steps back to take a sip of the by-now ice-cold coffee on the kitchen table and hisses. It’s automatic, then, for Michael to roll his eyes, indulgent, and take the mug from Alex to warm it up with fresh coffee from the pot. Just like he does every morning, when Alex puts every other task ahead of taking care of himself.

“Here,” he says, pressing the mug back into Alex’s hands, powerless to keep their fingers from tangling while he does. “I’m guessin’ if you’re running too late to let me get my hands on you, you’re also running too late to let me make you actual food, instead of choking down one of those god-awful protein bars you’ve got stashed in your glove compartment?”

Alex’s bashful look is answer enough. “I’ve got a lot to get done this morning.”

The pinky finger that’s been stroking lightly at Alex’s stops. Reluctantly. “Right. You know, maybe if you didn’t stay up all hours with Kyle Valenti, you’d have more time,” Michael says as he carefully nudges past Alex and makes his way toward the bedroom. 

He keeps his back to the door while he roots around under the nightstand for his jeans and his underwear. But he can still hear when Alex settles against the doorframe.

“Like I told you, the hospital and the base are working on a joint project to increase emergency medical capacity in the region. There’s a lot to go over.”

Michael’s sure there’s a lot to go over-- and that none of it has anything to do with a fake hospital project that Alex describes the same way, word-for-word, every time Michael brings it up. As if _Michael_ doesn’t know what a lie sounds like. 

“Uh huh. Kinda ironic, though. You having to spend so much time with Valenti, after he made your life miserable in high school. What are the odds that it’d have to be the two of you on this particular project?”

“Don’t remind me.” The huff from the doorway is all smart-mouthed punk, and it makes the corner of Michael’s mouth curl in a way it shouldn’t, while he’s trying to figure out what exactly Manes & Valenti: The Next Generation are up to. “He’s reformed now, apparently. It’s honestly kind of disconcerting.” 

Michael catches Alex’s eye in the mirror over the dresser. “You buy it? That he’s turned over a new leaf?”

Alex tilts his head and lifts an eyebrow, like he’s considering the evidence. “He definitely acts and talks differently than he used to,” he decides. “I don’t know how deep it goes. But I want to believe that people can change for the better. Isn’t that what you said, back in high school? Before you went full-on jaded cowboy?”

Michael pushes aside the echo of desperate promises made under the desert sky to a planet that never gave a crap. And the equally painful memory of Alex’s voice, nervous but determined, telling Michael two nights ago that Alex isn’t ready for the world to know, but that if Michael wants to tell Isobel or Max or his dad about them, then he should. 

“I said people can change. I didn’t say anything about ‘for the better,’” Michael says, before disappearing into the white tee shirt he pulls over his head. 

When he reemerges, Alex’s expression in the mirror has gone uneasy. He attempts a smile when he catches Michael looking, but the curve of it looks more wistful than anything.

“I’ve taken lives, Michael,” he explains, calm but unsparing. “It’s a pretty bleak picture if there’s no ‘for the better.’” 

It’s moments like this that those aggravating stabs of reckoning get harder and harder to ignore. Because there are only so many conclusions to draw from the fact that, the few times Alex has talked openly about his service record-- which seems to be just as fearless and brutally efficient as anyone who’s ever met Alex could guess-- all Michael can think about is how impossible it is to imagine Jesse interrogating his conscience so earnestly about the calls that seemed right at the time. And how easy it is to imagine what kind of soldier a boy who regretted punching his bully might become instead, if being a musician was no longer an option.

Almost like there’s space between ‘soldier in _a_ war’ and ‘soldier in _Jesse_ ’s war,’ that’s always been there, but that’s easier for Michael to crowd up with his own justifications than acknowledge.

Michael pushes the looming revelation away, and crooks what he hopes is an easy smile into the mirror. “Well, you’re the expert on second chances. I’m not the one spending all my time with Kyle 2.0 workin’ on-- what exactly did you say the project was? Getting the hospital ready to face some kind of threat?”

The frown that creases Alex’s reflection tells Michael he’s pushing too hard, even before Alex speaks. “I didn’t. Why do you care so much about what I’m doing with Kyle, anyway?”

Uh oh. Abort mission. 

Michael turns away from the mirror to face the real Alex, putting on a smitten smile. It’s never been a lie, that smile. It’s just his reasons for letting Alex see it that are.

“Maybe I’m just not wild about you spendin’ your nights with a hot doctor, instead of with me.”

Alex’s suspicious look melts into a blush that he tries to hide behind a glare. “Please never refer to Kyle as hot. Come on, I’ll give you a ride back to the garage. We can stop at the Crashdown, since I know how you feel about my coffee. I promise I’ll even pick up some quote-unquote ‘actual food.’”

Michael follows. But not without one last glance for the file folder still open on the living room coffee table. And whatever’s hidden beneath.

  
  


#

  
  


Michael ends up having to wait for his chance to find out what Alex and his cabin are hiding. Longer than he expects. Longer than any one of his hopelessly mixed motives wants. 

‘Cause it turns out Michael barely sees Alex at all the next week-- just a string of texts almost every evening saying he’s working late. Each one is shorter than the last, ‘til it’s just a “sorry” and an “x” that Michael can’t shake the feeling is going to turn into just a “sorry” next time, even though he can still feel the cautious brush of Alex’s lips against his cheek (behind tinted windows, obviously), when Alex had dropped Michael off at the garage with a Crashdown coffee and a middle finger that had failed to look anything but fond, in response to Michael’s oh-so-gentle reminder that the breakfast burrito sitting on the SUV’s center console is for eating, not letting congeal.

When Michael finally does see Alex in the flesh again, it’s after Michael nearly drops a wrench on his own foot, at his dad’s too-casual announcement that there’s a Manes creeping around Michael’s ‘airstream’-- eyebrow high on the last word. 

Michael knows real panic when he crosses the lot to find the airstream’s faulty door wide open, even though there’s no obvious signs that anyone’s been in the bunker underneath. The feeling dissipates immediately when he steps inside and doesn’t see the smug, wrathful face that still haunts the dreams that jerk Michael awake with one hand throbbing. 

The face that’s waiting for Michael instead is supposed to scare him just as much, he reminds himself. And it does. But this fear feels different, in ways he doesn’t want to think about.

Alex is sitting on the narrow mattress, straight-backed and far away. His furrowed stare is fixed on something in his hands that Michael can’t see at first, around the stacked-up crates filled with all the crap Michael’s accumulated over the years, that doesn’t fit in Casa Sanders anymore. Michael tells himself that it could be a warrant, or a weapon, but there’s no disguising the ring of habit in the recitation.

When Michael gets close enough to see what Alex is actually holding, his heart thuds harder all the same. ‘Cause the thing in Alex’s lap is a shoe box. _Michael_ ’s shoe box-- the one that lives out here on the little shelf above the bed, away from prying eyes. The one that’s filled with ancient guitar picks worn down by Alex’s fingerprints and the powdery remains of the three petals off Alex’s prom boutonniere that Michael had found wedged into the truck’s passenger seat. And the thing in Alex’s hands is the one picture that exists of the two of them together, out in the spot that will always be their spot, no matter how long it’s been since they made music and other things there.

And Alex is looking at it like he can’t for the life of him figure out why it would be here.

“Alex?” 

Michael’s voice is careful as he kneels down beside the mattress. This close, it’s easy to see that Alex hasn’t shaved since yesterday. Hasn’t slept in longer than that, probably, goin’ by the circles under his eyes. It doesn’t look like he’s changed his clothes, either. He’s still in civvies, even though he normally would have reported to base going on five hours ago. 

“I don’t understand. You kept this.” Alex murmurs, without taking his eyes off the faded image of two boys who Michael has reminded himself so many times were born to be enemies. 

“ ‘Course I did.”

“Why?”

Michael tries not to let the question sting, but the flatness of Alex’s voice, the genuine confusion about how this-- _them_ \-- could be something that, for Michael, can’t just be left in the dust without a backward glance . . . It gets to Michael, and there’s a bite in his voice when he answers, too quickly, “I dunno. Maybe ‘cause I’m not _you,_ Alex.” 

Alex doesn’t look up, but Michael sees his the set of his shoulders go even tenser than they already were, inside his rumpled blue-gray button-down. 

Michael forces out a breath, and tries again. This time, the words swell with a truth that feels deeper than just the question he’s answering. “I guess I’ve just never been any good at letting go of the past.”

Alex looks up at him sharply, wearing a lost expression Michael doesn’t think he’s ever seen before, but it barely lasts a moment. Then Alex nods, making another of those internal decisions Michael isn’t privy to, and puts whatever he’s feeling away, as surely as he tucks the photo back into Michael’s box of undeserved memories. 

“Sorry; I was looking for you and I saw that and got distracted. I wanted to ask you if you feel like coming over tonight. To the cabin.” Alex’s voice is casual and steady again, like the last thirty seconds were all in Michael’s head, and it’s perfectly normal for Alex to root around through Michael’s old boxes on his way to asking for a hook-up. “I shouldn’t be stuck at base too late.”

Michael sits back on his heels. “You’re goin’ in today?”

Alex frowns, then looks down at himself when Michael gives his not-uniform clothes an exaggerated once over.

“Oh, right. It was a late night. Slash morning. There were some-- computer files, I’ve been trying to get into for a while now. There was . . . more in there than I was expecting.” 

Michael makes himself breathe out.

“So you came all the way out here on no sleep and broke into my airstream just to ask me to come over? You over your data limit or something?”

The doubt in Michael’s voice sounds obvious, notwithstanding the attempt at calm, but Alex only shakes his head. He stands and looks at Michael with that soft smile Michael also sees in dreams sometimes-- the ones that wake him up with his _heart_ throbbing, not his hand.

Alex shrugs, the wrinkled shoulders of his shirt going up then down. “I just-- needed to see you. I missed you.”

It’s just about everything that Michael has ever wanted to hear Alex say to him. 

That’s proof enough that it’s a lie.

  
  


#

  
  


Despite Alex’s promise that he won’t be too late, Michael spends over an hour outside the cabin waiting on Alex to get home that night, even though he had closing shift at the garage. He thinks more than once while he waits about using his brain to pick the cabin’s lock, then move that coffee table aside, but he decides the risk of Alex coming back while Michael’s still mid-snoop is too high; even if he could think up an innocent reason for being in the cabin, he can’t think of one for how he got in without a key.

Not that that had stopped Alex this afternoon, at the airstream.

Michael’s lying on his back in the bed of the truck, eyes on the stars and thoughts somewhere else, when he finally hears the rumble of Alex’s SUV, then sees the beam of the headlights. He sits up slowly, while he listens to Alex cut the engine and hop out. By the time Michael’s sitting upright, Alex is standing by the lowered tailgate, with a crease above his eyebrows that’s half fondness, half something Michael’s not sure of. It’s not quite the lost look that Michael can’t quite convince himself he imagined this afternoon, but there’s a tinge of loss in it.

Michael decides to push all the questions and accusations and-- everything-- rumbling inside him to one side and play like they’re any other lovers. It’s what he knows how to do best, after all.

“What sorta time d’ya call this, Private?” 

Alex lets his dark eyes trail over Michael. Over the same nest of blankets in the back of the same truck whose picture Michael caught him staring at earlier. 

“Hm. 2008, by the look of it.” Alex’s voice is a low rumble that warms Michael through. He cocks an eyebrow and steps closer to Michael, one hand coming up-- 

Pausing--

No, not pausing. Thinking about it, maybe, for a heartbeat. Less than that. And then finishing the journey, coming to rest on the not-so-2008 scruff on Michael’s jaw. 

Now as then, Michael’s pretending stops being pretending at the touch of Alex’s hand. He turns without thinking to press a kiss into Alex’s palm. When he does, the half-curve of Alex’s smile grows. Somehow it only makes his eyes look sadder. 

Alex pulls away just enough to sit down beside Michael. For a moment, he’s as still as he was at the airstream. Then Michael feels Alex’s heavy exhale when he decides to let the truck have his weight. A second later, Alex drops his nose to the spot where Michael’s neck and shoulder meet, and breathes in. What’s left of the tension in his spine melts, seeping out in something that should be a sigh but sounds more like a bitter laugh.

“Long day?”

The only answer Alex gives is the short huff that kisses Michael’s skin. Michael can’t stop himself from turning his head to where Alex is still breathing in his smell, and nudging his forehead against Alex’s soft hair.

“C’mon, Private. Let’s get you to bed.”

Michael moves to stand, but Alex stops him with an arm around his stomach, pushing carefully until they’re both lying on their backs. 

“You’re gonna freeze if we stay out here,” Michael warns, even as he shifts to share the blanket covering his lap with Alex.

Alex’s eyebrows pull in. “You actually worry about me.”

Michael doesn’t know what to say to that. Because the ugly truth is he does, in one too many senses. But Alex doesn’t wait for a response before smoothing the confused lines in his forehead-- by what looks like sheer force of will-- and burrowing in beside Michael.

“You run hot, Sanders; I’ll be fine.” Alex snuggles his shoulders into the fabric beneath them. “God, this takes me back.”

Michael bites his lip against the truth, that it takes him back, too. Nevermind that he climbed into this truck without Alex every day for ten years; he still can’t so much as brush the tailgate without being back under the desert sun with Alex’s guitar ringing in his ears. Even though it was all built on Michael’s lies and Alex’s lack of interest in anything permanent.

He really is crap at letting go of the past. 

“Good memories?” he asks instead. Tryin’ for noncommittal, even though he can’t get it out of his head-- the lack of anything in Alex’s voice when he’d stared at the picture of the two of them and couldn’t imagine why Michael had bothered keeping it. 

Beside him Alex snorts, whatever misgivings he’d felt earlier gone. Or pushed away. “I lost multiple parts of my virginity in this truck. Yeah, I’d say so.”

Michael doesn’t answer, just turns his gaze back to the stars. Each one seems to shine with the same nervy determination he remembers seeing on Alex’s face, each time they got up the courage to try out some new way they could love each other, way back when. Before it ended. Before Alex ended it. Or he did. Or maybe they both did. Probably it was never meant to do anything but end, with a start like theirs.

He feels Alex’s gaze turn skyward, too. For a while they lie in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Michael’s just about to let his eyes slip shut, leave the stars and all the rest for tomorrow, when Alex’s voice stops him short.

“Do you think they ever really knew each other?” Alex asks, quiet and even. “Those kids out in the desert, in the back of your truck?”

Michael freezes. Alex feels it.

“Sorry; that’s probably a stupid question.” He’s still using that calm voice he’s been putting on all day, but here under cover of darkness it’s finally failing him. “We didn’t even talk that much, did we? Not about . . . But-- but we _connected._ Didn’t we? Like something . . . ” 

Michael can’t get air into his lungs, but he still manages to finish Alex’s abandoned thought, the word welling strong and clear from somewhere inside him. “Cosmic.”

They’re still lying close enough that Michael can feel Alex shake his head from side to side, the way he does when he doesn’t know what he’s tryin’ to say. “It’s just-- sometimes I think about my father. And his father before him. And his damn uncle that he used to talk about constantly, every time I didn’t measure up. And then I look at my brothers, and I think about what they were like when we were all kids, before our mom left. Like, how Flint used to idolize our grandfather out on the reservation. He’d sit with him for hours when we visited, until Mom would have to drag him away. And now . . .”

Alex trails off with a sigh, while Michael’s insides try to adjust to the uncomfortable buzzing set off by the thought of the Manes army as little kids, listening with big eyes to an old man’s stories. Before Jesse made sure his was the only voice his boys got to hear.

“Even if it’s stupid, I have to think it’s possible,” Alex finishes, voice so tight it could snap. “That the person I was back then, playing guitar in the back of your truck-- that I wasn’t wrong for thinking that any of us can be more than what we’re made from. That I can figure out how to be that person again.”

Michael hears in Alex’s callback to the conversation they started and never really finished the other morning, an echo of Max’s words from ten years ago, the day that everything changed for all of them-- that same steadfast belief that their destinies aren’t written by the people who came before them. Michael couldn’t find it in him to agree with Max back then; he couldn’t take the risk. 

So much of Michael _wants_ to agree with Alex now. The parts that sleep easy in Alex’s arms, and know, for all Michael’s constant, exhausting bullshit to the contrary, that Alex in fatigues is no more a friend to bullies than Alex in emo-black. Those parts want to tell Alex that of course he doesn’t have to conform to the mold that Jesse spent twenty years trying to beat him into. That Alex couldn’t be that man even if he tried; he’s too good, and too smart, and understands more about real duty than a thousand weaker men _or_ aliens, who would have given up their principles because the guy holding the stick said that’s what good soldiers do.

But even more of Michael _can’t_ say that. Can’t admit how impossible it is to imagine this more and more half-hearted game of spy he’s been playin’ ending with Alex doing anything other than following the moral compass that runs a hell of a lot truer than Michael’s ever has, and fighting like hell against the kind of injustice he’s been railing against since he was just a kid-- this time with all the tools he didn’t have when he was seventeen and couldn’t defend himself.

Which should be a good thing, by the way-- knowing that, whatever the Maneses of this generation have in store for Michael and his family, the strongest of the lot is going to set himself against them, whenever he finally figures out the truth. But Michael can’t _feel_ the good in it. He can’t feel anything but terror, at what _else_ is going to happen when all the secrets finally come out.

So the words stick in Michael’s throat, even as they sing through his cells, because that’s how he’s always been with Alex. Every part of Michael believes in Alex, except for the parts that can’t now, because he didn’t then, and there’s no changing any part of their horrible UFO-crash of a past.

After Michael sits choking in deafening silence for a minute too long, Alex shifts away. Barely a breath, but Michael feels it.

“It’s okay, cowboy.” His voice is nothing but a whisper. “I know you don’t believe me.”

_Not don’t_ , Michael thinks. _Can’t_.

Alex must be more exhausted than he’s letting on. Either that, or he doesn’t want to sit through Michael’s tortured silent treatment any longer. Because he drifts off after that-- the insomnia that usually keeps him up half the night, in and out of nightmares that pass too quietly for Michael to even notice, until Alex is sitting up in bed breathing in for five out for seven, suddenly nowhere to be seen. He doesn’t wake up again until Michael’s crawling back into the truck, too resigned to feel ashamed, one hand in Alex’s front pocket to stow away the keys Michael didn’t actually need to steal into the cabin and go down to the bunker. 

“Hey, Private,” he greets Alex’s confused expression, quickly flicking his wrist to pretend like he’s fishing the keys out instead of putting them back in. He keeps his voice easy. “Your leg’s gonna hate you if you sleep out here all night. Time to turn in.”

Alex lets himself be led back into the cabin and to the bed. He lets Michael peel his clothes off, doesn’t even put a fight when Michael bends to help with the prosthetic, Michael’s hands performing the task like muscle memory. Like this is what he was put on this planet to do. 

How much does he wish that were true?

When it’s just the two of them lying skin-to-skin with nothing between them but their secrets, Michael finds himself speaking into the darkness, staring up at the ceiling that Jim Valenti and his hunting buddy built this time, instead of the stars he comes from.

“Alex?”

“Hm?”

Michael swallows and shuts his eyes, even though he knows what’s waiting for him behind his eyelids. “That project you and Valenti are workin’ on. It’s not actually a hospital thing. Is it.”

Every sound Alex has been making as he settles into the mattress stops. Even his breathing. Michael’s own chest halts to match him. The piece of Michael’s ship that’s burned onto the back of his eyelids-- the one that Michael now knows is sitting in Alex’s bunker, next to stacks of notebooks and harddrives all covered in Alex’s precise handwriting-- seems to hum in the sudden hush between them, rising up out of the floorboards.

“No,” Alex finally admits. “It’s not a hospital thing.”

Michael swallows back his own hypocrisy to ask, “You ever gonna tell me what it really is?”

If Alex hears the catch in Michael’s voice, he doesn’t mention it. For long, silent-screaming seconds, Michael thinks that maybe Alex hasn’t heard him, period. Until the silence breaks, and Michael only wishes Alex hadn’t heard or answered.

“We both have our secrets, Michael,” he says quietly, with his hands gentle on Michael’s alien skin. “Don’t we?”

Michael clenches his jaw to keep everything he feels inside of him.

“Michael?” Alex’s voice is soft. 

“ ‘m fine,” Michael grits out, before turning onto his side. “Go to sleep, Manes.”

  
  


#

  
  


“So you’re sure that Alex Manes knows. About aliens.”

There’s no reason for Michael to feel Max’s question like a kick to the kidneys. But his alien anatomy doesn’t seem to agree.

“He’s got a piece of alien tech sittin’ in a secret bunker, and a stack of file folders with his handwriting all over ‘em. There’s no conspiracy wall covered with string and newspaper clippings, but yeah-- I’d say he knows.”

Max sighs and leans back against the service counter. Michael had texted Max and Isobel from the truck after leaving Alex’s cabin at the crack of dawn, full of excuses about a broken carburetor that needed to be ready by opening. They were both waiting in the garage when he arrived, Max standing in front of the counter and Isobel sitting at the rolling stool behind, while Michael’s dad pretended to keep busy cleaning tools that don’t need any cleaning.

Max crosses his arms. “Is he talking to his family? Who else knows?” 

“You mean other than Liz and everyone _she’s_ told?” 

Michael watches Max’s shoulders hunch up at the dig, before he takes a deep breath and turns to face the wall behind him. Like he knows he can’t keep up the patience he needs to continue this conversation if he’s gotta look Michael in the eye to do it. Even turned away from Michael, he raises one hand like he’s thinking about electrifying the corrugated metal just to expel some of the pent-up resentment that’s only been festering between the two of them since the drive-in.

“Not if you want to keep that hand, son.” 

Sanders’ gruff voice sends Max’s palm back down to his side, good and sheepish. 

“So, the Manes kid knows there are aliens in Roswell,” Sanders continues, once Max has tucked both hands into his jeans pockets and turned back around, eyes on his boots now. “So do half the people in this town, even if most of ‘em only think they know it from listenin’ to that damned idiot Green. The question is: does Manes know that it’s _you_.”

Michael and his dad have lived, then worked, in each other’s pockets every day since the day that child protective services got over itself and finally let Michael go home for good with the only person in town that actually wanted to be Michael’s parent. Michael thinks he can read his dad better than anyone can. But he can’t make heads or tails of the expression on his dad’s face right now.

“If he does, it’s not because I told him.” 

At first, Michael’s shaky answer doesn’t do anything to get his dad to quit it with the hawk-eye look. Then Sanders drops his head with a sigh that would almost make Michael think he was disappointed in Michael’s answer, if he Michael didn’t know exactly how Sanders feels about the family that took his friends and left him scarred. 

“What?” Michael asks. But his dad just wanders over to the corner, without answering.

Max, as usual, isn’t so shy about his opinions.

“Maybe you _should_ be the one to tell him. Maybe it’s not too late.”

Michael feels both of his eyebrows rise up to his hairline. “Yeah? Should I invite his dad over first? Make it a real meet-the-parents situation? Maybe we can invite Arturo over while we’re at it, and explain why he hasn’t seen his oldest daughter in a decade.”

“God, Michael. Enough! Alex is a smart guy. If he’s digging this hard, he’s going to figure out it’s us eventually. Wouldn’t it be better if he hears it from you?”

“Why, Max? ‘Cause then hearts and rainbows will fall outta the sky and he’ll forget all about the seventy-year vendetta between our families and the fact that he swore an oath to protect this country against its enemies-- which I’m betting includes alien invaders?”

It’s still easy to spit out the defensive crap he’s so used to hiding behind-- easier than giving voice to the panic that Max’s words have sent careening through Michael’s chest, at any rate. It’s making the old mantras sound anything but hollow that’s hard. And Max can obviously tell.

“You can’t possibly still believe that.”

“I’m sorry; I’m missing something here.” Isobel gets up from her seat behind the counter and comes to stand in the space between Max and Michael, that’s been getting shorter as their voices get louder. “You’re both talking about Michael and Alex like . . . like . . .”

She trails off, eyes darting first to Michael then to Max, before stopping and going wide. 

“. . . like me and Liz,” Max takes it upon himself to finish their silent twin exchange out loud. “Yeah, we are. Because that’s exactly what it’s like.”

Isobel whirls back to Michael, her perfect eyebrows scrunched up now with confusion and-- Michael’s gut gives a kick-- maybe a little betrayal. “Is that true?”

Michael makes himself look away from her, sending his gaze past her shoulder to Max. “You ever get tired of deciding you know best when it comes to other people’s secrets?”

“Michael’s been in love with Alex since we were all kids,” Max continues, ignoring Michael’s sneer, one eyebrow raised like he’s daring Michael to deny it. “Don’t worry; he didn’t tell me, either. But I figured it out. Takes one to know one, I guess. I don’t know exactly what’s been going on since Alex came back from the Middle East, but I feel pretty confident that Michael didn’t find out about the alien fragment by staging a random break-in at Alex’s cabin, like his text said. Not anymore than he broke that hand trying to sneak into Jesse Manes’ office, or whatever lie he came up with back in high school.”

Max gestures toward Michael’s ruined hand-- Michael’s testament to all the love and hate that’s tangled up between him and the Manes family-- and Michael finds himself curling the limb back against his chest, hiding the warped knuckles, even though Isobel and Max have both seen them countless times. But never exposed like this. Never with context.

Isobel doesn’t seem to notice Michael’s withdrawal. She takes a step toward him, the shock on her face giving way to something wistful and almost proud. It reminds Michael of the way she looked at Max dancing with Liz, the night of the reunion. “Michael, if this is true, then of course you should tell Alex. The two of you-- I can’t believe I didn’t see it. God, the way he used to look at you in high school . . . There’s no way he would betray you.”

Isobel’s encouragement makes him feel even more exposed than Max yanking down the curtains all around Michael’s hand and heart. 

“Nobody’s tellin’ Alex anything,” he manages to say, putting out a hand-- his good hand-- to signal that his word is final. But Isobel’s eyebrows are knitting together again.

“But why not? If he loves you, he’ll help us.”

Michael just huffs out a miserable laugh, that Isobel takes as a denial.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Look at Liz! Yeah, she was suspicious at first, because of what happened with Rosa. But once Max told her the _whole_ whole story, she understood. She’s even helping me with that serum, to amplify my powers and see if I can find those voices in the desert again.”

Michael’s heard plenty about Liz joining Team Alien, after Max came all the way clean about Rosa. He’s not in love with the parts of the story that involve Isobel turning into Liz’s guinea pig, especially since he thinks that, at least at first, Liz cared more about juicing Isobel’s power up enough to locate _Rosa_ than to find maybe-real alien prisoners. But he thinks the skepticism’s only halfway a smokescreen for his gnawing jealousy at seeing trust and faith and all the other things Michael could never muster up for the love of _his_ life, being rewarded.

“It’s not the same,” he tries to tell Isobel one more time. But she can’t let it be.

“Why not? If you--”

“Because Alex is never gonna love me like that!” 

All four people crowded into the garage go still and wide-eyed as Michael’s unintended confession echoes through the metal walls. Even Michael himself.

When no one speaks, Michael runs both hands down his face, and lets out a ragged breath. He makes himself open his mouth and finish the thought, squeezing his throat to keep a normal volume this time. 

“Whatever Alex feels for me, it’s not like Liz loves Max. Not when he knows the truth. Not when he knows the _whole_ truth _._ ”

“Michael--”

Max is stepping forward, his earlier annoyance and self-righteousness gone, replaced by all that bleeding-frickin’-heart sympathy that Michael can’t take, now or ever.  
  


Michael shakes his head and Max stops. “Isobel had to use her powers to get Liz to leave you. You were right when you said I have no idea what that feels like. ‘Cause Alex ran all on his own. And that was before he knew what I really am. What I did to him.”

Max looks down at the ground, like he’s trying to find a way around his own words from that night at the drive-in. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. Or that he’d ever let his family hurt you.”

“I _know_ that.” Michael _does_ know it. And if he’d actually let himself believe it, maybe the knowledge would have done some good. But he didn’t, so it doesn’t. “That’s not the problem.”

Michael’s gritted out words make Max’s ever-excitable eyebrows rise up incredulous. “Then what _is_ the damn problem, Michael? Seriously, I’m trying to understand, but-- You’ve been in love with this guy for half the time we’ve spent on this planet. If it’s not about the persecution fantasy anymore, then why not just tell him? What else is there to be so afraid of?”

Michael shuts his eyes, trying without any luck to go back to believing that what he fears the most is that the kid who used to sing down the storm inside of Michael is nothing but cold, compliant Captain Manes now, come to lock Michael away forever.

But that stopped being Michael’s real nightmare a long time ago. Maybe the first time Captain Manes kissed him and it felt the same as it always has. ‘Cause Alex may need to believe that people can change, but the truth is Alex hasn’t-- and not because he’s been a Manes monster inside all along. Because he’s never _needed_ to.

And the only thing Michael really fears is knowing that the man Alex is now is gonna do the same thing as the boy Alex was, once the truth comes out. The same thing _any_ Alex would do, and should do, because Michael’s never done anything to earn better.

“He’s gonna leave me.”

Michael opens his eyes just in time to see Max’s eyes go wide, like he hadn’t thought Michael would give a real answer.

Michael hadn’t thought he would either. But now that he’s pressed play, it feels like there’s no stopping the tape. Not when this song’s been waiting ten years to be sung. 

“Maybe I do trust Alex with my life,” he says with a shake of his head-- even though he and Max both know there’s not any ‘maybe’ about it, not anymore. “Hell, maybe I even trust him with both of yours. But I _didn’t_. I screwed it up, too many times. So no, Max-- I can’t tell him. ‘Cause as soon as he learns the truth, he’ll be done with me. And it’ll destroy me.”

Just like every time a Manes Man meets an alien. Only this time, it’s not the Manes’ fault.

Max’s mouth opens and closes, and Michael swears he can see every fairytale that Max has always believed in when Michael couldn’t, flashing before his eyes. “You don’t know that,” he starts, without much in the way of confidence.

But Michael snorts over the fumbling search for reassurance that ain’t coming. “No? ‘Cause Alex didn’t want me enough to stay, back when he thought I was just your usual teenage screw-up wastin’ his life. Hell, he didn’t want me enough to _write_. What am I gonna say to sweeten the pot now? ‘We’re meant to be, Alex; just ignore the part where I’ve been lying my way into your bed for ten years because I couldn’t get over a last name you never asked for?’ Tell me if you think that’ll work, Max, ‘cause I’m not seeing how it ends well!”

Michael doesn’t realize how much he really does want someone to tell him that they _will_ end well-- him and Alex-- against all odds, until Max’s quiet sigh, and Isobel’s “Oh, Michael,” make clear that there’s no such encouragement coming.

“So, what?” Max finally asks instead. “You just count down the days until he figures it out on his own? Is that really your plan?”

Michael huffs out a sigh that sounds more like a sob than it deserves to, so he follows it up with a casually hopeless shrug. “What do you think I’ve been doing the last ten years?”

There’s not much to say after that. When Max and Isobel leave, to pretend to do their jobs and not think about the imminent demise of their species, Michael finally looks over to where his dad has been leaning in silence against a cabinet in the corner of the garage. He hasn’t said a word since Max’s big reveal-- and Michael’s bigger one.

“You got anything to add?” 

It’s easier for Michael to come out swinging, than to face the humming under his skin at the possibility that his dad might look at him differently, now that he knows what Michael’s been doing with their family’s enemy all these years. 

As usual, Sanders lifts his eyebrow at Michael’s mouthy tone. But that’s the only rise that Michael can get out of him. He crosses his arms, but otherwise doesn’t break his bored slouch.

“Just that your certified-genius card’s not worth piss, if you think any of that was news to your old man.”

Michael’s jaw drops, and Sanders scoffs. “I may only have one eye, but I still see out of it, kid. I was there when you’d come back from the desert at all hours, pretending not to moon at that guitar you thought you were hidin’ in the passenger side of your truck. And I was there the day that boy shipped out. It don’t take an alien genius to make those pieces fit.” 

“You’re not . . . mad?”  
  


“About him bein’ a Manes or you breakin’ both your hearts over it?” Michael hangs his head at his dad’s sharp assessment, but Sanders isn’t done. “That’s between you and him. I don’t pretend to like his people; I’ve seen what they do. But if you believe he’s different than the men that killed Roy and Louise and took your mom, then I’ll do my best to trust you.”

_‘Cause that’s what you do for people you love_ , he doesn’t have to say.

Sanders’ voice is stern, but the facade doesn’t last past whatever he sees on Michael’s face. “Go. Get a shower,” he adds with a tired sigh. “I’ll open up. You look like hell.” 

Michael nods and heads for the exit. But before he reaches the door, his dad’s voice stops him one more time. “I may not like the Maneses, but I do know that God didn’t make a one of ‘em a fool.”

When Michael turns back to face his dad, he’s looking at Michael with that same unfamiliar expression from before. “I knew the truth about you and your Manes for ten years, but I didn’t say anything, ‘cause I thought maybe you’d decide to tell me yourself.” 

His lone eyebrow arches, a judgment Michael can’t answer.

“You ever think maybe he’s doing the same thing?”

  
  


#

  
  


When Michael gets home that night-- gets to Alex’s cabin that night-- Alex is back early for a change. He’s sitting on the couch in just his sweatpants and tee shirt, with the guitar that Michael fixed up for him cradled in his arms. He doesn’t look up when Michael settles into the other seat, just keeps running his fingers reverently over the curve of the wood.

“Was wonderin’ if you’d ever get around to trying it out.”

Alex doesn’t bother denying that the case has sat carefully propped in the corner, collecting dust, since the night Michael brought it to the cabin. The fact that he’s chosen _now_ to finally open it up, and let out the music inside, only adds to the feeling, thick in the air, that something’s coming.

That borrowed-time countdown, marching its way toward zero.

Michael watches as Alex’s hands move over the instrument, careful and sure. The way he touches everything that matters to him but still ends up getting left behind in the end. Then Alex lifts the guitar into position, his eyes full of challenge, and he sings. 

_Really_ sings. The way he never has for Michael before.

He doesn’t make it through a whole verse, barely gets past “swear I was born right in the doorway,” before Michael is pulling the guitar away and putting himself in Alex’s hands instead. He rests one knee on each side of Alex’s hips, and kisses away Alex’s desperate “ _Michael_ ” and the question tucked inside it, replaces it with “ _Alex_ ” and “ _always_.”

Because he always has. And he always would. If he deserved to. If it would make any difference, now.

He yanks Alex’s shirt off, lets Alex pull him close-- for now-- and mark him. 

He’s not brave enough, or stupid enough-- whichever it is-- to tell Alex the truth of who he is, even though he can feel Alex asking in every rock of their straining bodies. Can hear it in every quiet gasp that he can’t risk missing tonight, even if it’s _just_ tonight. But he can show Alex this much: that Michael is the man who still sees spaceships every time he convinces Alex Manes to stay close enough, just for a little while, for their heartbeats to play in time. 

The man who loves his enemy so damn much, that trust just isn’t an option.

  
  


#

  
  


Two nights later, Michael finishes a shift at the garage to find the airstream five feet in the wrong direction, the bunker door open, and Captain Alex Manes sitting at Michael’s worktable, staring at a shipful of alien tech like it broke his heart.

When the fight’s all over, and Michael asks Alex what he’s gonna do now, the captain stops at the base of the exit hatch.

“Do you mean ‘am I going to turn you over to the man who spent the first eighteen years of my life showing me exactly how he treats people that he decides are less than human?’”

Michael knows he more than deserves the sharp words, so he hangs his head. “I know you won’t,” he starts to say quietly, but stops when Alex’s dark eyes go forbidding black. Michael forces himself to straighten up, then, and meets Alex’s unyielding glare head-on. “I’d deserve it, though. For what I did to you.”

The cold steel of Alex’s expression gives way at Michael’s words to something that looks like revulsion. Or horror. But, as always, Alex only gives the reaction free reign for a moment, until he can school himself back to perfect control.

“I’m going protect you, Michael. That’s what happens next,” he says quietly, fist squeezing white-knuckle on the rung of the ladder he’s going to climb in silence, no matter how much it hurts him. “Maybe one day you’ll actually believe that.”

“Aren’t you gonna ask?” Michael’s voice echoes, loud even against the droning hum of the ventilation system. “About what your dad said to you. How I didn’t love you, I was just using you. Don’t you want to know if it’s true?”

It occurs to Michael, as he actually hears his words rebound desperate and almost angry off the bunker’s walls, that what he’s actually asking is for Alex to stay. Just a few seconds more.

Alex barely pauses. 

“I already know, Michael. Do you?”

He’s gone before Michael can think to answer.

  
  


#

  
  


Michael goes back to avoiding the places where he might run into Alex after that. Only this time Max _and_ Isobel know that’s what he’s doing. They give him sympathetic looks between updates on Liz and Isobel’s progress with the psychic serum, and outright gentle looks when they pass along Kyle’s reports on Alex’s efforts to pry each nail out of the legacy that Michael told himself everyday for a decade meant more to Alex than Michael ever could.

He doesn’t see Alex himself again until Isobel’s serum-juiced powers and Alex’s meticulous dismantling converge to put a name on Isobel’s prison in the desert. It’s easy then to avoid eye contact, what with all the team meetings and self-recrimination and stakeouts and storming an off-books facility. Until suddenly there are sirens blaring and lights flashing and Alex isn’t just beside Michael, but latching onto Michael with panicked eyes, yelling that they have to go.

But Michael hardly registers any of it. Because he’s here in the prison that Isobel first heard a decade ago, and there on the other side of unbreakable glass is his _mother_. 

Michael can _hear_ her. She sounds like dancing in a barn and making things grow, and getting prodded and tested and tortured in a box for seventy years for her troubles. Her eyes close, and Michael hears the shape of a woman who looks as much like Isobel as his dad always said, and _himself_ but a baby, and a military man with high cheekbones and quiet determination that Michael recognizes but can’t place. She sounds like Michael does inside: loud and alive and chaotic. And Michael wants to pick up a guitar and show her the amazing thing that this planet they never picked to crash-land on just happens to have, that can calm them down. Just as much as he wants to give into the noise instead and tear apart every Manes Man that took that option from both of them. 

That last thought makes a sad note curl through the rest of Nora’s noises. It reaches out for the matching sound in Michael, that can’t ever wish the Manes line truly gone, no matter how hard he used to try.

“--chael? Michael! We need to leave. Now!”

Michael turns away from his mother to face whatever is making Alex beg like that-- Alex who came home from the war with all his old resignation and rage not gone, like Michael had been stupid enough to think once, but fused into wary stoicism. Who didn’t even blink when Michael confirmed that he’s been lying to him every day of their alleged relationship. 

As soon as Michael looks away from the glass, the sounds inside of him go back to being just his own again. Loud and overwhelming, yeah, but not enough to drown out the sound of the compound melting down all around them. 

“-- are already back at the cars,” Alex is saying. “We have to hurry.”

It’s his eyes that steal Michael’s attention, though, more than his words. All that time Michael spent worrying how Alex would look at Michael if he knew the truth. It feels like it should be more surprising, to know that the answer was always _this_.

“You have to go,” Michael blurts, cutting over Alex’s words. “Alex, you have to get out of here.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying. Come on!”

Michael can feel the insistent tug on their joined hands, but he doesn’t budge. 

“Michael!”

He just shakes his head, even as he can’t help but smile, takin’ this man in one more time. Michael’s rock-ribbed control freak who shouts orders with as much command as any of the men he came from, but tries so hard to make them good ones. Even when Michael refuses to see it.

“You’ve left me behind before, Private,” Michael says sadly. “Get out while you still can.” 

Alex recoils like he’s been slapped, but only for a second. Then he’s stepping forward into Michael’s space, hands on Michael’s shoulders, with all that blazing sadness in his eyes. “I am not leaving without you. So unless you want us both to die here in this damn prison that my father built, you need to move _now_.”

Michael feels his head start to shake again, because Alex isn’t making any sense. ‘Cause this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Michael can almost make his peace with this being the end for _him_ , here beside the mother who risked everything for Michael, who Michael let rot all alone, while he plotted meaningless revenge in her name, that only ended up hurting the one Manes who never deserved the pain Michael brought him.

Who _still_ doesn’t deserve the pain Michael is bringing him.

But the idea of this being the end for _Alex_ \--

“-- for me, Michael. I know you can. You protected me from my father, in that toolshed, remember? You didn’t have to step in, but you did! Even though I’m a part of all the worst things in your life.”

Alex’s words are sharp and intent, and Michael can’t block them out. Not anymore than he can get away from the clutch of Alex’s hands around the back of his neck, holding Michael so tight that Michael can’t even shake his head to say that none of that is true. That all Michael has ever done is hurt Alex. Alex _knows_ that.

Alex must see the denial on Michael’s face anyway, and his eyes burn even more intent. “How about the night you brought me that guitar, when I hadn’t even touched one since before my second tour? Or all the mornings you bitched at me about having more than cold coffee for breakfast? Or-- or the night you picked me up when my car broke down? You were going to leave me alone out there, but you couldn’t. You protected me then, and you’re going to do it again now. It’s what you always do, in the end. Even when you tell yourself you’re not going to.”

Something about Alex’s words make Michael feel like he could scream. Like he could shatter glass even without the TK that whatever’s laced into the walls of this place is dampening. He falls forward onto Alex instead, pushing their foreheads together. Trying to make Alex understand how wrong he has this.

“ _Go_ , Alex. You have nothing to stay for. I used you! I _lied_ to you!” 

“Yeah, you did. And you were miserable at it.”

Michael shakes his head; it’s all he can do, ‘cause Alex isn’t getting it. “I never loved you,” he tries. He hates the taste of the words-- a lie too far even for him, at last. But if it makes Alex get the hell out of this place, if it keeps Alex safe . . . “You said you knew. Remember? I asked you! About what your dad said about me. And you said--”

“I _said_ that I know how you feel about me. How you always have.” Alex’s voice is so steady Michael can’t help but start to crumble, knowing Alex will be there, strong arms to pick up the pieces. “You’re the only one who doubts it, Michael.”

The alarms around them are getting louder and the ground is rattling, the low vibration of heavy machinery grinding into position. But the tremors can’t shake Alex-- not when he’s decided he won’t be moved. Nothing can.

“Please, Alex,” Michael tries one more time, a whisper that he knows has no prayer of working. Alex won’t be pushed aside, and Michael--

Michael won’t let the Manes Men destroy Alex for that. No matter how many times Michael himself hurts Alex and lies to him and blames him for doing the same things that Michael’s done as long as they’ve known each other, Michael can’t let him fall victim to the people Michael was stupid enough to ever believe Alex had anything in common with. That’s as much a part of Michael’s programming as the hurricane inside him.

Michael looks back to the glass wall of the cell beside him, and he hears it again. Hears _her_ again. Nora. She’s a storm of _my baby_ and _go now_ and _what I always wanted_ . And something else that Michael can’t understand. A melody beneath the rest, that comes out when she looks not at her flesh and blood, but at _Alex_ . The descendant of the men who put her here. It sounds like trust, and _he’ll take care of you_ , and . . . ice cream. Desert skies.

“She’s my mother,” Michael chokes out, even as he can feel his feet lifting off the concrete floor. Obeying her wishes. “How can I leave?”

The firm set of Alex’s mouth wobbles, and the hands digging into the back of Michael’s neck come up to frame his face. So careful. Always so careful. His throat bobs once, then twice-- like there’s something he’s gotta say but can’t get out. Even through the haze of his own grief, Michael can recognize the expression. The tension that comes with trying so damn hard for so damn long--

Not to give too much away.

“Sometimes we leave because we _can’t_ stay,” Alex finally says, voice like a crash landing and eyes like the fire after. “Not because we don’t love the person we’re leaving.”

What a time, Michael thinks, to finally believe him.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UP NEXT: What's past is (only) prologue. Again. And again.


	7. Prologue Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I’ll be there in five, Private,” Michael says after getting the location._
> 
> _“You don’t need my name?”_
> 
> _Michael can hear the teasing echo of memory in the question, and he offers his own unseen smile in answer, even though there’s a taste of loss at the corners. “I know who you are, Alex.”_
> 
> Not an epilogue, but a prologue, again. 
> 
> And again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't thank you enough for reading this story, and for how incredibly warm and encouraging you all have been to a stranger in this fandom. I hope that you enjoy the final chapter to this AU saga. This installment's a little shorter than some of the others; but then, it's amazing how much more straightforward a star-crossed love story can be when the star-crossed lovers actually . . . (gasp) . . . talk.
> 
> One quick note: as promised in the tags, even though this is primarily an AU, there is a spot of post-Season 2 fix-it tucked in before the end. As I've mentioned in comments, I started writing this story partly as a way of processing how angry I was about a lot of things that Michael did in Season 2. This AU provided a way to get inside the character's head in circumstances where he's going as hard if not harder on some of the kinds of choices that aggravated me in Season 2, and to prove to myself that he could still find his way to being honest about what he really wants and needs, and to learning to accept the pain of the past (including the parts that he's responsible for) instead of being consumed by it. After bringing Mr. Sanders and his Captain Manes on that journey, it felt unfair not to let our Mr. Guerin and _his_ Captain Manes share in some of the joy . . .
> 
> Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart for reading. I hope you enjoy!

**Prologue Again, 2019**

“Sanders Auto.”

Michael still spins circles in the squeaky stool behind the desk when he talks on the landline-- same as he did a decade ago. Just like he still plays the muffled radio in the corner high enough that his dad would grumble, if he wasn’t already home on the couch, probably taking advantage of Michael’s absence to enjoy his secret stash of pork rinds without a pointed reference to what his doctor said about his cholesterol at his last appointment.

So much is the same as before, but so much isn’t.

Michael’s mother is dead, again; has been for going on ten months now. It feels different, somehow, than believing she’d been dead for decades.

Max is with Liz, which isn’t different. The different part is that they’re both somewhere in northern California-- and Michael, God help him, actually finds himself missing his brother’s infuriating brand of dewy-eyed interference. But he knows Max is putting old wrongs to right. He and Liz are working on finding an Ortecho who’s been in the wind for over a decade, fueled by Isobel’s attempts to locate what they’re all seriously calling Rosa’s ‘psychic energy.’ Maria Deluca, of all people, has been helping Isobel focus her newly juiced-up powers, after having been brought into the Team Alien fold. She and Isobel still circle each other like cats, the wounds of the past not all the way healed for anyone in their little group. But sometimes when they bicker, Michael thinks they almost sound like sisters.

Kyle Valenti is a pain in Michael’s ass, just like always. But the fact that his judgmental glares happen now because he’s so damn overprotective of Alex is pretty frickin’ different.

Alex is the same and different, too. He marches around Roswell in that uniform he never wanted, ruthlessly focused on dismantling his family’s legacy and certain that his orders will be followed. But he takes the uniform off-- without changing the man inside it-- when he plays open mic night at the Wild Pony. Michael never goes in, but he hears Alex’s true voice-- not mumbled and hidden anymore-- while he stands just outside the entrance, leaning against the grubby exterior with his ears straining for something he’s missing.

His ears perk up at the sound of that same missing something coming through the receiver now, asking for a tow. 

“I’ll be there in five, Private,” Michael says after getting the location.

“You don’t need my name?”

Michael can hear the teasing echo of memory in the question, and he offers his own unseen smile in answer, even though there’s a taste of loss at the corners. “I know who you are, Alex.”

When Michael gets to the spot where Alex’s SUV is conked out on the side of the road, it’s obvious that there’s no quick fix this time. And if that ain’t a metaphor, Michael doesn’t know what is. He tows the SUV to the garage and offers Alex a ride home in his truck, then proceeds to drive them both out to a spot in the middle of the desert that hasn’t seen the two of them together in eleven years. 

Alex doesn’t say anything when Michael puts the truck in park, just lifts an eyebrow that Michael can only meet with a shrug of surrender. 

“Take a walk with me?” 

Alex’s other eyebrow shoots up, but he nods. “Sure.”

“We don’t have to. I know it’s late. The prosthetic--”

“-- is fine, Michael. The new one fits a lot better.”

“The terrain’s a little rugged for the last bit, but--”

“Michael.” Alex grabs one of the flashlights that Michael has pulled out of the back while he rambles. “You worry about me too much. You always have. Now let’s go.”

It’s easier to grumble out a “yes, Captain,” than to give voice to the thing that pangs inside Michael’s chest, same as it did at Caulfield, at Alex’s stubborn insistence that Michael has ‘always’ done anything for Alex, other than try and fail to not give a crap about him. But Alex still turns to him in surprise.

“I think that may be the first time you’ve called me by my actual rank.”

Michael shrugs again, but he holds out an arm that Alex takes, to get over a jut of sandstone. “It’s a part of you.”

“Yeah.” Alex squeezes Michael’s forearm before letting go. “I guess it is. Although, honestly, I’m less insulted by getting called ‘private’ every time you thought you were being cute last year than I am by how _bad_ you seemed to assume I am at my job.”

There’s enough of a smirk in Alex’s voice that Michael knows he’s joking, even without raising the beam of the flashlight to show that face that still makes Michael’s knees weak. “When did I act like you were bad at your job?”

“How about when you assumed that a guy who hacks into computer systems for the military wouldn’t have bothered to put up a security system in his own cabin?”

Michael half-stumbles at a minor mystery solved. Luckily, Alex is there to offer his arm this time. 

He probably should have known that it was stupid to try to brute-force his way into the secret bunker at Alex’s cabin. But when has his supposed genius not taken hits around Alex? 

“So that’s what finally gave me away, huh? I wondered. The night I broke into your bunker?”

Alex’s laugh will never not be the best kind of music-- even when it’s directed at Michael. Maybe especially then. “You mean the night I ‘accidentally’ fell asleep in the bed of that godforsaken truck to see what you’d do? Hacking into my father’s off-books operation the day before and finding your name and picture all over it was a pretty big hint. But yeah, watching the footage of you levitating my coffee table five feet in the air in order to access classified materials? I’d say that was the final nail. That and the smell-- but I guess you couldn’t really help that one.”

“Excuse me? My _smell_?”

“You smell like rain, cowboy. Did you not know that?”

Michael shakes his head, not sure if the rush of emotion that rips through him is from hearing Alex’s nickname for him again, or from the sudden barrage of sense memories, each one of Alex’s tight shoulders relaxing as he curls in close and inhales Michael’s scent.

“All the bits and pieces of alien tech I found with Kyle carried that smell-- at least a little bit, below the acetone and other chemicals. It took me a while to place it.” Alex chuckles at himself, like he doesn’t realize that he’s the star at the center of a solar system he’s never even heard of. That Michael’s whole heart is just his plaything. “But once I did, I finally realized why Afghanistan made me so angry on my first deployment. I used to be so pissed off those first few months, thinking that it never smelled right, not like the deserts here. Only it turns out it wasn’t really the desert I was missing.”

The opening to the turquoise mines is rising up just ahead of them, and Michael can’t reach it quickly enough. “You okay to head up there?” he checks, signalling with the flashlight. 

Alex nods and follows. Once they help each other inside, and Alex is standing slack-jawed, bathed in changing silver light that lingers over every line of Alex’s face, the way everything that came from this pod does, Michael turns to face him. His heart’s in his throat. Beating so loud he can ignore all the other chaos that’s inside of him. 

“Is this-- This is where you came from.” Alex can’t stop staring at the pod. With no fear, no greed. Just wonder.

Michael takes Alex’s hands in both of his-- the good one and bad one.

“This is how you should have found out about me,” he tells Alex, each word crammed full of as much regret and apology as he can make fit. “Not seeing me on your security tape, or reading it in your father’s torture memos, or-- or rain. This is how I should have told you. A long time ago.”

Alex looks away from the pod long enough to turn gentle eyes on Michael. “Michael, I understand why you felt like you couldn’t tell me. The things my family did to yours . . . You don’t have to--”

“Except I do. I really do, Alex. ‘Cause uniform or no uniform, you are nothing like your family. You never have been. And I was wrong to treat you like you were, especially ‘cause I _knew_ what kind of person you are-- how good you are, and how you’ve never let anyone push you into doing something you don’t believe in. I was just too scared of losing you to let myself trust in us.” 

Alex presses his lips tight together. Once he gets his features to steady, he sighs out a heavy breath. “I didn’t exactly make it easy for you to trust my feelings for you. And you weren’t the only who didn’t show everything you are.”

Michael opens his mouth to balk, but Alex silences him with an eyebrow, bossy as ever-- whether he’s a teenage know-it-all or a decorated captain. “I had to leave this town, but I didn’t have to make you feel like you weren’t worth staying for. Like I didn’t wake up on the other side of the world beside myself because I couldn’t smell your skin anymore.”

Michael squeezes his eyes closed and lets Alex take some of his weight. The hands that come up to push back his curls only make the tears harder to hold back. 

“I’m sorry we had such a sad story,” he forces out before they can fall. 

He hears Alex’s deliberate breath, just like a hundred times before. Then feels Alex tuck a curl behind his ear, carefully. “Do you think that’s what we are?”

Michael has to open his eyes at that. “What else would you call it? I only started hanging around you because I wanted to keep an eye on your family. I lied to you, so many times. And I didn’t trust you--”

Alex cuts in. “No, you didn’t trust me. You didn’t trust _you_ , either, though-- to be someone I would believe is worth defending from my family. Or worth forgiving. So I guess I can’t be that offended.”

There’s a quiet kind of regret that passes behind Alex’s eyes when he talks about Michael not believing he’s worth Alex’s impossible goodness that settles wrong in Michael’s throat. _No one_ is worth Alex, let alone someone who’s done the things Michael has. Alex is just too self-sacrificing and always too damn stubborn to see that.

“You _should_ be offended. You should--”

“ _I’m_ talking now, cowboy.”

It takes everything Michael’s got, to shut his mouth against the protests that want to keep coming. But he owes Alex this much, after everything. To listen for a change, to something other than his own hopeless clatter.

An approving half-smile passes over Alex’s face as Michael swallows down his words. Combined with the hand that rakes soft but firm through Michael’s hair, it’s all Michael can do not to purr. He might have done-- if it weren’t for how aware he is, of how little he deserves to curl up in Alex’s lap and soak in Alex’s approval, no matter how much he’ll probably always crave it. And always has.

“You didn’t trust us,” Alex murmurs, his voice that same combination of firm and soft, uncompromising and still kind. “And you did lie to me. And, even though I’ve spent way too much time reliving the way you used to undress me with your eyes during those so-called ‘guitar lessons’ to believe that it was ever _just_ about my family, I get that you had mixed motives at virtually every stage of our relationship. I’m not an idiot.”

“That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt, finding out the truth. Just ‘cause I was bad at hidin’ it.”

Michael can’t let that part go unspoken. And he thinks it would, if he waited on Alex to say it.

Alex proves Michael’s suspicion by inclining his head. It’s agreement, but not one he’s ready to speak out loud.

“We both got hurt,” is what he says instead, letting one of his hands drop to Michael’s shoulder, then down his arm, to catch Michael’s bad hand. 

. . . to catch Michael’s _hurt_ hand. 

“ ‘s not the same thing,” Michael insists, the words like bricks, each one coming faster than Michael can stack into anything other than the clumsiest excuse for a defense against the mercy that’s hinted in Alex’s words, and more than hinted in the circles that Alex’s thumb traces over Michael’s stiff knuckles. “All the awful things your family has done-- it doesn’t cancel out what I did to you. It doesn’t--”

“Did I say that it did? Would you stop trying so damn hard to misunderstand me?”

Michael’s fortress loses any integrity it had at Alex’s pointed interruption. Or maybe at the sweet loops Alex keeps drawing over Michael’s scarred skin, even while his dark eyes burn.

“I’m not interested in fighting with you about who did what, and how forgivable or unforgivable it was! Or-- or standing here trying to convince you that, I may not be the one that decided to become the alien version of Mata Hari, but I still understand about making suboptimal choices out of fear of my father. I just-- I don’t want to keep score with you, Michael! I don’t want to be defined by our past forever. And I don’t know how to say it in a way you’ll actually hear . . .”

Alex trails off with a sigh. He sounds bone-tired, like that gut-deep well of fight inside him is the only thing keeping him going.

That’s Michael’s fault, and he knows that. But he also knows that-- he can do something about it, maybe. 

He turns his hand in Alex’s, savoring the old familiar press of palm against palm, and the parts of the past it carries with it, that Michael never _wants_ to let go of-- of skin on skin and gripping too tight and never tight enough, in Michael’s truck, in Alex’s bed, in any place that Alex will let Michael be beside him. He brings Alex’s knuckles-- perfect, even though Michael knows Alex has taken just as many hits as Michael has, and more-- to his lips, and feels the muscles holding all those tough but breakable little bones together, unclench.

He can’t quite meet Alex’s eyes, speaks into Alex’s skin instead. It feels like too little, too late. But if Alex wants it, it’s his. “What are you sayin,’ Alex?” he asks, open as he knows how. “I’m listening. I swear to you-- this time, I’m listening.”

Alex makes a noise that gets caught in his throat, but he continues. “I’m saying-- I don’t think you can know if it’s a sad story without an ending. Until then, it’s just . . . a story where some sad things have happened.”

Michael huffs out a sigh, shaking his head. Still not sure how he ended up on a planet that logically he knows he was never made for, that’s full of noise and small-minded people, but that also has desert skies and guitar music and this man who decided at seventeen to dig his black-painted nails into hope and never let anyone tear it away. Not even Michael himself.

“I want to be a _good_ thing that happens to you, Alex.”

Alex nods, seriously. “So be a good thing.” 

“It’s just that easy, huh?”

Alex shrugs. “You’re the genius, Michael. I just know that you and I got put on opposite sides of a war that my family started without either of our permissions. That we were young, and didn’t always make good choices, and were both scared out of our minds to admit how much we loved each other. And in spite of all that, you still managed to be the best thing in my life.”

For once, Michael’s got no plans to interrupt Alex; he’s got no plans to do anything but stand here, drowning in Alex’s dark eyes and hoping no one ever throw him a rope, if he’s honest. But Alex presses in even closer, like he expects an argument, his voice going harder.

“And before you say anything, that’s not a reflection on the number of crappy things in my life. You are not the winner by default,” he insists. “It’s because you are loving, and protective, and-- we see each other, somehow. No matter how much we both try to hide. So I’m going to keep believing that you can be as good as you choose, at whatever you choose, regardless of our past-- even if you can’t believe that yourself.”

There should be rules against Alex Manes, but Michael’s glad no one’s ever gotten around to writing them. He can even be a little bit glad that he broke every rule he ever set for himself where Alex is concerned. 

“You’ve always been my best thing,” he grits out, waiting in vain for the day that he’ll be able to make a romantic declaration that sounds anything other than desperate and a little bit angry. “You’re what I choose. Manes or not. Soldier or musician. You’re it for me, Alex-- always have been. Even when I didn’t know how to admit it. Even when I still don’t get why a man as good as you would ever want to waste time with a vindictive asshole like me.”

Alex’s eyes darken in the way Michael has spent more than a decade leaning means a fight’s coming, so he holds up both hands, untangling them from Alex’s in the process. The two of them are standing too close together for there to be any atmosphere between them, so Michael lets his palms come to rest where they’re already brushing, just above the strongest heart on this or any other planet. Feeling the beat of it like this, slow and always so steady, Michael lets himself imagine it staying right here, always, next to him. Gives the hope that lives tied down in the bottom of his stomach, noisy against its restraints, permission to lift off, course set for the bright beacon of Alex’s belief, lightyears above him. 

“I’m gonna figure out how to believe in this,” he promises Alex, voice shaky with the rush of being suddenly in orbit-- a spaceman who had to meet an earthling to understand how to fly. “And how to _show_ it. I’m gonna try. I _have_ to. ‘Cause sometimes I think . . . I crossed a universe just to find you.”

Alex brings his forehead to rest against Michael’s with a wordless sigh, and Michael lets his eyes fall shut. Lets the love song that is Alex fill up his whole universe. 

It sounds like home, he realizes--

  
  
  
#  
  
  
  
  
  


“--chael! _Guerin!_ ”

Reality snaps into place again around Michael. Around Michael _Guerin_. And he quickly wrenches his hand away from the glowing purple disc that immediately starts fading back to black without the heat of Michael’s hand on it.

“Guerin?” 

Michael shakes his head at the fading resonance in his ears that makes the name feel unfamiliar. Like it’s bumping up wrong against an echo from somewhere else. He pushes the feeling to one side, and turns to face Alex instead.

The two of them have been rifling through the formerly locked storage closet in Graham Green’s office at the new UFO emporium, trying to gather whatever clues they can to figure out who’s behind Green’s uncanny knack for getting his hands on dangerous alien artifacts-- their latest mission, other than dealing with Max’s evil twin, and Alex’s maybe-evil-maybe-redeemable brother, and all the rest of the crap that’s always coming at them. Alex is taking slow breaths through his nose. He looks like he’s fighting an urge to throw himself between Michael and the no-longer-glowing disc. 

He’s beautiful.

“Well, that’s _one_ other thing in this place that’s legit alien,” Michael says, making himself focus on the reason they’re here.

Alex raises an eyebrow that eloquently conveys ‘no shit, cowboy.’ “ What is it? What the hell did it do? The second you touched it, it’s like you went somewhere else.”

He talks like a drill sergeant when he’s scared, Michael thinks with hopeless affection. In every universe.

“Guerin!”

“Sorry. Uh. Not sure. I think it shows . . . alternate universes? Parallel universes, would be my working guess. I was here, but I was also . . . another me. In another world.” He huffs out a sigh. “Maybe if Liz was actually around she could take some brain scans and tell us.”

The thought of Michael’s favorite lab partner, off in California because she played God with Michael’s family’s DNA and then Max decided to blow things up instead of using his words, puts in sudden harsh relief everything that’s worse in this world than the one Michael just got an instantaneous eleven-year upload of. Max’s own worsening god complex, for one. And the years of mind-control and violation that they didn’t know enough to protect Isobel from this time around. The Ortechos coping with a dead daughter for ten years instead of a runaway, not to mention Jasmine and Kate and their families. And Sanders-- 

Michael nearly loses his footing at the sudden twist of loss.

\--Sanders being the gruff old character who always had a place for Michael on his couch. Instead of being Michael’s _dad_.

Alex’s hand on Michael’s shoulder, settling there like an instinct at Michael’s distress, lowers the volume on the clamor of Michael’s sudden grief. It’s a reminder that some things in this world aren’t worse. Or, at least, aren’t any more damn star-crossed than Michael ends up making them in any universe.

That some things are just the same as they always are, maybe.

“Come on.” Alex lets go of Michael’s shoulder with a careful squeeze. “Green will be back from his break soon. We’ll come up with a plan for extracting this thing later. Preferably one that doesn’t involve you touching unknown objects bare-handed.”

Michael trails Alex silently, until they reach a room he thinks he remembers, even though the building’s been completely overhauled since high school. He wonders absently if the museum in that other universe he saw gets gutted, too, and if that Michael still hears a voice singin’ it’s the first day of his life, every time he walks through, all the same. 

His money says yes. He bets there’s no Michael in any universe that wouldn’t know those cheap stars and spaceships anywhere. That wouldn’t eventually find himself holding on too tight to the youngest Manes Man beneath them. Even if it takes him a while sometimes, to get back there.

“You were there,” he blurts out to Alex, who’s a pace ahead of him, before all the way deciding to say anything at all. “In the vision. Or the dream. Whatever it was that thing showed me.”

Alex stops and turns to look back over his shoulder with one eyebrow lifted. “The scarecrow and the tin man, too?”

It’s just a joke, but Michael can feel his heart crack at how easily Alex discounts his place in Michael’s story. Because somehow in two different universes he’s fallen in love with every piece of Alex, and been crap enough at showing it that this Alex doesn’t realize that there’s never gonna be any other scarecrow for Michael. That Alex, always, is the one that Michael misses most of all.

“They were together. Him and-- me and-- Us.”

Alex’s features stay perfectly still. Then a muscle in his jaw jumps, and he tilts his head with a sad smile. “Guess they didn’t make as many mistakes as we did.”

“They made more. _I_ made more.” Michael has to shake his head once he actually hears the words out loud. ‘Cause apparently he’s _always_ the slowest genius on this planet, missin’ all the signs until it’s too late.

Almost too late.

“Not all the same ones as us,” he admits to Alex’s fiercely blank expression. “Big ones, though. But they didn’t give up after.”

Alex’s eyebrows go up, and Michael feels a shot of the shame that’s been his constant companion these past few months, at the thought of Alex waiting alone all night in the junkyard for Michael to come back and talk like he said he would. At the thought of Alex answering every time Michael called for months after, steadfast in his determination to be kind to Michael, even when Michael took every opportunity to try and shout down the truth with sheer volume, hollering that his world is happier without Alex in it. 

At the thought of Alex watching Michael walk away from Alex finally singing what’s inside him.

Michael hangs his head. “ _I_ didn’t give up after,” he corrects. “In that universe. Not like I did here. I tried to. I screwed up with you so badly there, I thought there was no fixing it. But--”

_But that Alex didn’t let him give up_ , is the truth.

Good thing, too. ‘Cause Michael may not be genius enough to see it on his own, in any universe-- that the past is where you launch from, if you’re brave enough to risk the flight. But now that it’s been shown, he’s not making _this_ Alex-- _his_ Alex-- wait another lonely night in that junkyard hoping Michael will figure it out.

Michael doesn’t realize he’s killed the single step between them until Alex’s eyebrows are drawing in.

“Guerin?” 

Alex asks once with the tender concern he’s so good at pretending is just sternness. He asks again, more confused, when Michael curls his healed hand-- no bandana-- against Alex’s jaw.

Michael answers both questions the way he should have a while ago, and learns that Alex’s kisses are the same as his bossy streak, and his breathing exercises, and his hardfought fundamental goodness. 

The same in every universe.

When they finally pull apart, slow and reluctant, there are not-plastic stars in Alex’s eyes, but apprehension, too. Because he stands his ground, this human Michael loves. He won’t be fooled by Michael’s bullshit.

“I thought you were holding out for a happier story?”

Michael ducks his head at the excuse he gave after walking out on Alex’s song at the Wild Pony. The excuse he’s been giving for years now, instead of just admitting to Alex that he doesn’t trust himself to be good for Alex. Or to be _enough_ for Alex, either, after everything they didn’t mean to do to each other when they were kids.

He tries honesty now, speaking the words against Alex’s ear.

Alex makes a wounded sound, but Michael leans down to soothe it with a kiss on the side of Alex’s neck, where his human heartbeat pulses. Slow compared to Michael’s. But still the prettiest music.

“You and me-- we’re not perfect, and we’ve hurt each other a lot more than either of us realized. _I’ve_ hurt you this past year-- so much-- tryin’ to pretend like I was past it, instead of actually believing we could fix it. But I’m willing to try again if you’ll let me. ‘Cause we were never a sad story, Alex. Just a story where sad things happened.”

He looks up to meet Alex’s eyes, and slides his arms around Alex’s waist, hoping Alex can feel the start of so many apologies. And fights, probably. Epic ones, knowing them. Mistakes. And as much love as Michael can squeeze out of the world of chaos inside of him. 

He thinks about telling Alex that Alex is the one who taught Michael that their story may have started with a crash, but that doesn’t mean it’s not headed starward-- a couple times over, now. But the thought gets left behind on earth, when Alex’s steel finally crumples like tin, as he dives back in and takes Michael once more to see the spaceships.

The ones that carry Michael home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
